Fish Sellers and My Block in Chongqing (Yangjiaping)

I’m going through pictures and videos I took while in China, and I’ll be posting the ones that I think share a lot about what it was like to live in China and Chongqing and that I hope will be of some interest to you. They’re all short videos, 2 minutes or less.

This first one was a common sight on the sidewalk at night; small sidewalk restaurants sold fresh fish pan-broiled in hot spices with veggies. As you can see, there is a basin of oxygenated water keeping the fish alive. You pick out the fish you want and the guy weighs it on the scale; you pay by weight. As you can also see, the fish was flopping around too much. It really shocked me to see this the first few times, and then I got used to it. When he chucks it down the sidewalk, he’s throwing it to the person who will cook it. I know we think it’s gross to kill and eat meat on the spot, but without access to good refrigeration, this was the safest way to eat meat in China for a long time, and now it’s tradition.



This second video is of the block where I lived; it begins as I step through the main gate where my apartment was located, and continues to the end of the block. The thing I remember most is all the noise of this street. This was during the lunch/naptime block, so there were fewer people on the street.

This block is where I caught buses to go to the train station, bus station and to V's house and the entertainment/shopping district of Shapingba, where a few other friends lived. (I had to cross the street and walk a ways further to take buses to R.'s and T.'s homes.) This block is also where I bought beauty items, tea drinks, street snacks and other misc. items. Crossing at the end of the block led to the subway station and the Yangjiaping (my 'hood) main entertainment/shopping district, where we went for the big grocery store, bank, movies and nicer restaurants. I spent a considerable amount of time walking this stretch of my city, and I made friends with some of the sellers who set up on this block.



If you have any questions about anything you see in the videos, please ask and I will answer in the comments.

Traditional Chinese Comb Gift, Neat Thermos

I didn't know before I lived in China that wooden combs are a traditional gift to give to girls/women, especially as a goodbye gift.

At the tourist neighborhood of CiQiKou in my city, there were shops selling decorative wooden combs and hairpins, but I didn't think much of them, I thought it was just a tourist trap item. But in the days before I left Chongqing, I received several nice wooden combs as a going away gift.



They’re made of wood and painted with enamel. All the combs I received came in these nice boxes and were made by the same company; I’m not sure if this company is well-known for combs, or if they are the ones who sell in my area of China. One student wrote cute little messages for me all over on the box itself:



The combs are often stylized, such as this yellow comb I use on a daily basis and is carved to look like a fish:



All of the female volunteers I know were given combs as gifts, so I think it’s a pretty common practice, but one I’d never heard of. I asked someone why a comb was a traditional gift and she said, “Because it’s useful and beautiful.” Yes, they are both of these things! I find the wood makes my hair look more smooth than using a plastic comb, too.

-------------

My Chinese friend Cassie gave me this neat little pale pink/gray thermos as a going away gift; she knows I took a liking to the Chinese custom of drinking hot water and tea, so this was a really thoughtful gift. It’s extremely lightweight, well-sized for your hand and the thermos lid has this neat screw-off compartment for holding dry tea, instant coffee or any kind of mixer. Ingenious! It’s made by Tayohya, but I couldn’t find any stores selling these in the U.S. online. Maybe in Chinatown I’ll come across one. I use it constantly, it’s very well-suited to being carried around.

Gratitude And Socks

You guys, let me be honest for a minute: the past month has been tough.

I gave up my apartment in San Antonio to go to China, and just before leaving I moved all my stuff to my mom’s. So that’s where I am while I job search, at my mom’s. This is not a bad thing at all; I’m closer to my brother and sister and extended family, and my mom is easy to live with. BUT, it’s certainly not where I want or expected to be. I’ve had to change my attitude the past week or so; I’m choosing to be grateful for gifts and opportunities I have in my life right now, rather than focus on what (I think) I lack. One of the great things is that my mom lives in a colder climate than San Antonio, so I get to indulge my love of socks.

I LOVE socks—cute and versatile and less expensive than buying shoes and purses. In San Antonio I hardly ever got to wear socks because it’s just too warm most of the year; I had an extensive collection of chanclas, but hardly any socks.

In Chongqing, I wore tall socks all winter long because it was so bitingly wet and cold and I didn’t have indoor heat. My sister sent me some great thigh-high gray socks, and I had a nice collection of argyle over-the-knee socks. It was popular in Chongqing to wear thick ‘skin colored’ (meaning, Han skin coloring) footless tights with socks over the top; I did this look with skirts and chunky heels mostly:



I wore through most of my socks and threw them away when I was packing to come back. Now, with winter approaching, I get to replace them!

Some of my favorite socks I get at REI; Smartwool socks are very warm and long-lasting—these were the only socks I took with me to China that made it back with me. I highly recommend them, and they come in both cute and functional. This pair is now on my wish list:



You can see some more here.

The Joy of Socks and Amazon also carry great over-the-knee and knee-high socks. Target, too, but I couldn’t find any online today.

Happy socking!

Shanghai Pictures, Plus When The Care Bears Go Too Far

I found some pictures from Shanghai I never posted, thought some of you might enjoy seeing them. They are all cell phone pics, though, so not super high quality.

A hot water dispenser, very common in China. The Chinese characters say 'caution scalding', meaning scalding water, but the English 'care bear!'?? I can't even call this Chinglish or a mistranslation, this is just a joke someone played, right?

British style telephone booth, a cultural relic of the British occupation of Shanghai I assume. I was amazed how clean and empty the sidewalks of Shanghai were, compared to Chongqing:

An apartment courtyard; this picture makes me so homesick:

Little places to grab a cup of afternoon tea or coffee.

An aquarium in the pedestrian tunnel. I remember thinking how fancy Shanghai is compared to Chongqing, based on the underground tunnels alone. Wouldn't it be cool if your job was to take care of pedestrian tunnel aquariums?

In contrast, this is what I saw most nights on the sidewalk outside my gate in Chongqing. My taxi pulled up to this:

My American Bed, With Chinese Characteristics

I had a great bed before I went to China-- a deep pillow top, to which I later added a tempurpedic foam topper. Ahh... like sleeping on a cloud.

Chinese beds are usually one piece, not two, and therefore quite a bit more firm and less cozy. It's not exactly like sleeping on a box spring, because there is a thin layer of padding, but it's close. At first these beds felt really uncomfortable, but give yourself two years, you get accustomed to things you never imagined you could. Here's my apartment bed; it's a little hard to tell, but I had a box platform, then the boxspring style mattress on top of that.

I liked these box bed platforms, I imagined they were a design relic of the traditional 'kang' bed, where hot coals were placed in the box's empty space to heat the bed overnight. Believe me, with no indoor heat, I would've loved a kang bed!

Here's a bed at our favorite hostel in Chengdu. You can see the wood plank and thin mattress we slept on, and it's actually quite comfortable, I slept very well on this bed. (Not my legs, btw.)

-------

So, now I'm back in America, back to a big fluffy American bed...and it was really, really difficult for me to sleep on. My back and neck hurt all the time. I finally had to admit: my big American bed is now too darn soft and cloud-like. So this week I gave in to my Chinese characteristics and removed the top mattress, and I'm back to sleeping on just the box spring, with a foam topper. Ahh...so firm and familiar! And no more back aches.

Next time I have a sleepover, I guess it will need to be someone familiar with Chinese-style beds.

Bodily Functions Are For Everyone, Even The Vaginal Ones

Most of you know Chinese culture views privacy differently than American culture, most easily explained as 'there isn't any expectation of privacy in Chinese culture.' I knew this affected personal space, family and friendly secrets, neighbors knowing what you're up to all the time, everyone always in your bidness, etc.  but I didn't realize it also extended to the body.

It does.

In my experience, bodily functions aren't considered private in China. Sneezing, burping, coughing, passing gas, peeing: all these things are viewed as natural functions of the body, so you don't have to say excuse me, you don't God Bless anyone, and you definitely don't feel embarrassed when they happen...if you're Chinese, that is! Many North Americans...it might take a while to get to that point. (I think this is also why babies and little kids pee everywhere and no one freaks out. Babies pee and poop...why NOT on the sidewalk?)

When you first get to China, you're probably going to get sick. I can't think of anyone in my group who didn't get sick, but we have doctors available 24/7 and they will ask you all kinds of questions about the quality and quantity of your poop and whether or not you see anything weird in the toilet bowl. After a while, you kind of get used to talking about these things. (Some more than others!)

I knew I had become pretty comfortable when I was handed a bag of medicine at our January training conference, just prior to my trip to Hainan Island. (Sidenote: before we went on vacation we had to submit an itinerary; the medical staff checked it to give us any special medications we might need before going to that area, like malarial drugs.) I was sitting with a bunch of my guy friends when I opened my bag, which included a box of Chinese brand vaginal yeast infection suppositories. I pulled it out to inspect more closely. "Um, why do I have this? Why did the medical office give me vaginal suppositories??" Now, usually the last thing a group of 20-something guys wants to discuss is vaginal suppositories, but they started firing questions at me:

"Let me see it...yup, that's what it is."
"Hmmm...DO you have a yeast infection?"
"Is there anything weird going on down there?"
"It includes a finger glove? Open it up, let's see it!"
"So THAT'S how you say 'vagina' in Mandarin!" (He was joking, he already knew!)

I wasn't embarrassed at all to be discussing what the medical office thought was possibly wrong with my vagina with a table full of guys I see on a regular basis. Thanks China, for giving me the gift of no shame.

(Endnote: my friend C., who is super awesome but lives in another province so I hardly ever got to see him, piped up with the correct answer: "Wait-- did they also give you malaria meds? You need the suppositories  in case the malaria medicine gives you a yeast infection." C. was the hero that day!)

It also made me laugh when a good friend went home and literally the first thing she said to me when she got back was, "I have diarrhea." Only in Peace Corps...

Adventures in Mind Control

I wrote about this briefly before, but I want to expound on it today.

As a university teacher in China, I was coming to the cultural game about 20 years late; my students all shared the same cultural background, and because culture just 'is' in China, not very often do they explain or expound upon cultural reasoning or traditions.

So sometimes things like this would happen: I devised a lesson plan for my English major students to help them feel more comfortable using the subjunctive tense, i.e. 'If I were...., I would....' and so on. I made the theme 'Superheroes', something I thought they would enjoy talking about, and asked them to choose what superpowers they would have and how they would use them for the benefit of humankind.

After giving them time to prepare, I asked a few students to share their answers with the class. "If I were a superhero, I would have the power to read minds so I knew if anyone was going to do something bad, and then I change their thought so they wouldn't do it." The second student I called on stood up: "If I were a superhero, I would read minds so I could stop people from doing bad things before they did them." Third student: "If I were a superhero, I would read minds so I could change their thoughts and stop all the bad things." And so on.

After about the 5th student, I asked them, "Did all of you choose the power to read minds and stop bad things before they happen?" 35 head nods. "No one wants to fly, or change into an animal, or become super strong?" 35 confused faces look back at me; how would these things help humanity, exactly?

The uniform answer my students gave surprised me, because I was thinking like an American: I was giving them a choice. And their answer was to take away choice. My students were not accustomed to choices, and for them, this was probably the hardest part of my teaching style to adapt to. It's possible that mind control was the only logical answer for them to give, but it's more likely one student had this idea and the others decided to co-opt it as a safe choice. There was no need for them to have different answers; it's American teachers who want diversity, not our Chinese students.

My students have not been raised to make choices. Asking them to form groups of their own choosing met with blank stares, until I taught them how to do it. Asking them to sign up for a time to take their oral final exam prompted the question "Why don't you just tell us in what order to take it, like our other teachers?" (My answer: "Because I'm an American teacher and we like to give choices.")

I often felt that this issue of choice was the biggest dividing line between me and my students: I asked them to do it, knowing they'd dislike it, and they liked me as a teacher despite my insistence on occasionally asking them to make choices. But my second year, I changed the theme from Superheroes to something else.

Awkward Questions

When we agreed to be Peace Corps volunteers in China, we also agreed to never ever, ever, never, ever discuss the ‘3 T’s’ with any Chinese Nationals: Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen Square. Those topics were pretty easy to avoid; I think the entire time I was in China, people only asked me about them 3 or 4 times. And it is fairly easy to deflect conversations in China; if you change the subject, they accept that means you don’t want to talk about it. But there were other questions asked that weren’t necessarily verboten, but for me, awkward to answer. Such as:

1. “What do you do in America to spot the counterfeit money?” There is a problem with counterfeit money floating about in China. It’s quite common to be passed fake money, to the extent that if you get fake money from an ATM, the bank is not responsible for reimbursing you. (The safest way to get money is from a teller, because they check it before they hand it to you.) So you learn to inspect the paper on everything higher than a five, and if you do get fake money, you can make a scene or decline it or whatever. Or try to pass it to someone else. So when the business teachers asked me how we spot fake U.S. money, it felt awkward to have to admit we don’t really have the same size problem. One of them said,"But how? Your money is easier to counterfeit than ours!” Um, I don’t know. We just don’t really have to worry about it. I mean, I know there is counterfeit money, but not in daily rotation like there is in China. I still don’t really have a good answer for that.

2. “Why do Americans just say ‘Korea’ when they really mean ‘South Korea?” My answer: it’s tradition to just say ‘Korea.’ Follow up question, “What if you want to talk about North Korea?” Answer in my head I didn’t say out loud, "’Most Americans don’t talk about North Korea.” In China, there is South Korean and North Korean. In America, there is usually Korean and North Korean. My students picked up on this. They are smart kids.

3. “Do you have to have a visa to go to Hong Kong?” No, American citizens don’t need a visa to go to Hong Kong. “Oh, in China we have to have a visa to go to Hong Kong.” I never really said anything after that, just something lame like, “Oh.” But inside I was cringing.

All of these questions were asked out of sincere curiosity; it’s just that the answers made me feel a bit awkward. Luckily, they were usually short conversations.

Autumn Can Change Your Life

Caution: this is kind of a girly post.

For those who don't know me personally, I am half Chilean, half American. I inherited my mom's darker Chilean coloring and my dad's American features. I'm a mutt! And all my life people (salespersons, friends, etc.) have been telling me my coloring is Winter, because I have dark hair and dark eyes. Winters have pink undertones in their skin and look great in lots of white, black, navy blue, cherry reds, purples, etc... And gray. I LOVE gray. My mom would always tell me I looked like I was constantly dressing for a funeral because I wore so much black, gray, and white. But I noticed in lots of pictures, I looked kinda terrible. I thought I just really didn't take good pictures.

So one day I'm in China innocently looking something up on the internet and I read that many Latina and Asian women are not Winter, they are Autumn: dark hair and eyes but with gold undertones to their skin, not pink, and that a quick way to check if you are Winter or Autumn is too look at the veins in your arms and legs: are they blue or greenish in hue? I checked: totally green! I've been an Autumn all along! So really, I should be wearing browns, golds, brickish reds, and warm colors, not cool. Changed my life, y'all. I started replacing all my blacks with browns, whites with creams, and cherry reds for warmer hues. It really did change the tone and reflection of my skin. I looked much healthier and less pallid. The gray is really hard to stop wearing, though. I still love it.

Two related stories:

1. I emailed my mom and said, "Guess what? I'm an Autumn, blah blah blah" and explained to her the whole theory. My mom is very fashionable from her days as a singer, so she likes this topic. I got back an email in all caps that simply said, "I TOLD YOU NOT TO WEAR SO MUCH BLACK." Touché mom, touché.

2. T. and I were sitting talking when a Chinese girl told him out of the blue, "You look like a Brazilian soccer player, but that shirt is wrong for you." He looked at me and I said, "Yeah... she's right. Let me see your arm." Blue veins! He was wearing green, an Autumn color, and he is definitely a Winter. I had a chance to color code a few of my American friends in China; I know they are all SO grateful for my help. (I'm pretty sure things like this are the things they tolerate about me.) I also share this example because I love how in Chinese culture, this was totally normal for her to say. I don't know if I'd ever tell someone I didn't know well and wasn't being paid to help that their shirt color was all wrong for them. But in China, it's totally fine to do that. Your business is my business, mi amour.

In China most people are Autumns, and I noticed that the clothing for sale reflected that: lots of yellow and green and brown and warmer colors. And I've noticed here in America, it's all white, black, blue and red. It's harder for me to find those warmer colors here. Just an observation.

Check your veins! It might change your life. (Spring is the fairer version of Autumn, Summer is the fairer version of Winter.)

It's Probably A Good Thing I Don't Have Telepathy

I caught the flu, so I've had lots of time to sleep/rest/read. What I hate most about being sick is how boring it is! And how I lack the motivation to do anything about that! (I'm actually a little relieved it's the flu, because initially I thought it was food poisoning, and I was sad that my Chinese-germ immunization to food illness was over. But yay, it's just the flu!)

Another weird consequence of reverse culture shock I didn't anticipate: being in a crowd of people where everyone speaks a language I recognize freaks me out. In China, because I lived in a city where most people spoke the local dialect instead of Mandarin, I still didn't understand most of what was going on around me. (This is not true of all volunteers; many of them are much, much smarter than I am.) I got very used to tuning out what I could not understand. So even though I was surrounded at close range by literally millions of people, I existed in this little mind bubble where I didn't really have to pay attention to what was going on around me.

But my first week back in America, when I went to my family reunion, I felt like I had been placed in a big amplifier-- I understood EVERYTHING! And I couldn't get my brain to shut off these random snatches of conversation I was hearing from all directions. It was very confusing, and overwhelming. For my first few weeks, I have had to retreat away from this kind of situation, because it is just too much for my senses to take.

Remember the part in X-Men where Jean Grey puts on Dr. X's headset and hears everything like he does and it's too much for her? Yeah, it was like that. It's slowly getting better, but I dread going places where there are more than a handful of people I can hear at any one time. It has made me much more sympathetic to people with autism, because I imagine this is a little taste of what their life is like everyday. And it's really difficult.

I know a few of my readers speak multiple languages, and I am curious if any of you ever experienced the phenomenon of understanding way too much. No one tells you these things before you come home.