Prodigal stunned - part 1

It's the middle of June, and I haven't seen my passport in 2 weeks.  This is a source of consternation, because I am going to be leaving the country on June 26th.

With about seven days to go before departure, I demand to have my passport back.  The reason for this demand? The 'helpers' have said that they are finally going to get off of their asses and take our paperwork to the local security bureau to get our residence permits re-upped.  This will take an inordinate amount of time, so much so that my passport will only be given back to me (assuming nobody loses it, gets drunker than usual, or just decides to take a 'me day') on the early afternoon of my departure day, some 2-3 hours before I am to leave the city.  This is unacceptable, so I ask:

"Is it a question of me spending 2 hours in an office now, or two hours in an office in the fall?  Is this going to matter in any way?"

"No no it's the same, it will be no problem!"

The director of my program having assured me there would be no problems with me re-doing my residence permit in the fall, I confidently re-acquired my passport with a smattering of time to spare before I fled this wretched berg.  I'm sure eeeeeverything will turn out just fine, and no directors will lose their jobs as a result.  The china, everybody!

Prodigal stunned - part 2

So picture this: it's late August, and I'm beginning to actively dread my impending re-departure.  To add to it I have real concerns over whether I'll be able to visit the country (see part 1) at all due to visa issues, but I am officially packed up and off to the airport.

It's worth noting that I had spent about a week emailing everyone involved about the visa issue, to which I got some confident 'don't worry, the police in the city know you are coming!' - type responses.  At a certain point, you just have to believe people.

The check-in person at YVR, alas, was having none of this, and so it was that I informed my higher-ups that I was, in fact, not bound for China on the day I was supposed to due to not being given a visa.  Their solution?  I go beyond my contract's scope and get down to the travel agent (something of an idiot savant for inefficiency about 98% of the time) and arrange my own visa.

The only thing that could be accomplished with any speed was a tourist visa, as a work visa requires city-specific documents that take weeks to get at the best of times because, you know, China.  However, I was assured confidently by the travel agent (whose entire job is knowing everything about Chinese visas) that I could somehow transmute it into a working visa while in-country.  Awesome.

Having already said all my goodbyes, I checked into a hotel for a couple nights to wait the visa process out, rather than going back to the island/crashing friends' couches in Van into oblivion.  The flight was uneventful, and I was picked up by school car (AS IS THE RULE when coming from Vancouver).

I was sure my working permit would be organized in a few weeks.  After all, I'd been given a generous 60-day stay on my visa with which to illegally work, what could go wrong? Many local adults were working hard on rectifying this situation.

5 weeks later they admitted they couldn't get it done....but....was there another option in 'China'? (dramatic sound cue)

Prodigal stunned - part 3

Hong Kong!  What an exciting prospect! I had always known I was going to visit it sometime during this school year, but a free trip?  Even one that probably involves me spending a day in a lineup to get a visa?  Sweet!

Everyone was happy, and stopped worrying about my impending deport-date; old students advised where I should go ("the racetrack! Beer and beauties!"), and I even began to look into movies that would be out/concerts I could check out of various varieties...good times.

After a couple weeks of radio silence regarding my flight date to Hong Kong, there was finally some crazy news: one of the Chinese staff had actually done some work!

While reading a document, the person in question happened upon an interesting tidbit, that being that only Hong Kong nationals could get mainland work visas in Hong Kong (after a recent policy change).  This meant that anybody else had to do it in their home country.  It took about 6 and a half weeks (give or take) for somebody to actually read this document after it became apparent that mistakes had been made.  Efficiency.

Thus I found myself going out to the Jinan airport (because, you know, organised support network) on my own dime.  Explaining why I was going to be gone for a week (Halloween week, no less) to the students left them positively agog at the lack of organisational facility displayed, once I explained all the steps leading from June to this moment.  Their consolations ("haha, it's China!") rung in my ears as I took off for the most travel-logged week of my life.

Prodigal stunned - part 4

A weird few days led up to my unexpectedly sleeping for a few hours on the plane.  I've never really been able to do that, because planes (and my cheap company puts us on Air China for obvious reasons) aren't designed for anybody over 6 feet tall, so it was with patent shock that I woke to find that time had, indeed, passed.

I was never able to fully relax back in the real world, because I knew I was really just stealing time from myself.  It was obviously nice to eat large pieces of boneless meat, breathe smog-less air, drink scum-less water, and sleep on a concrete-less bed, but I knew I was going to pay for it all in the form of an absolute deluge of sub-par assignment marking upon my return - plus there was the ever-present spectre of another looming trans-pacific flight to tug at my zen state.

In a strange way, though, getting to the airport again was also a relief, because it meant my few days of shopping for exotic items my friends had ordered (E45 cream? What the hell is that?), as well as being castigated for tracking dirt into my temporary domicile, were over.  I've become rather inured to flying over the Pacific Ocean since my initial hellish flight to Auckland in 2011, but it doesn't mean I don't hate almost every minute of it.

There's something about being in what amounts to a swiftly careening jerky machine for half a day that will never fail to put my teeth on edge.  The necessary dehydration makes my eyes burn after an hour, which is usually about when they get around to giving you the option to watch heavily-edited movies (for content AND duration!)...which I would need a clockwork orange-like device to make watchable, because my eyes automatically close.  

My thought for this trip was that if it could make me somehow teleport directly to my destination, I would have announced to all the passengers aboard that I was going to do it, and then immediately poured hot coffee all over my crotch for their amusement at my pain.  Alas, that wouldn't actually work...the only uptick is that in the future I will scoff at puny flights from Canada to England/Europe.  8 hours? You can barely get uncomfortable in that time!

Prodigal stunned - part 5

Just clutching my head.  Clutching my head, and thinking that I didn't want to die on a concrete bridge in China; if a bridge it must be, then perhaps one of those picturesque wooden ones, but never a horrible overpass bridge outside the Jinan airport.

When I arrived there was no school car to meet me (despite my inquiry), so I shrugged, expelled some colourful language, and went to read the bus information board.  Now, I can't read Chinese at all, but I can recognize the symbols for my city (the first one looks like a little factory! Cute!), and saw that the bus was at 12:30pm.

I got to the bus by 12:08pm, loaded my bag (with precious goods for friends and myself alike garnered from the real world), and decided I had enough time to go use the bathroom in the nearby KFC.  When I got back (12:11pm), the bus was gone.  Gone.

I went from bus to bus bearing my city's characters and checked the cargo holds to ensure that, yes, the bus was gone.  At this point, a young bus driver came out and, with the use of typing simple things into my iphone, assured me that the bus had left at 12:10.

"Well, shit!" I said.
"dui dui, eshit!" he agreed.

I could get on the 1pm bus, or get a taxi for about 30 dollars.  I decided to go look for a cash machine (only having about 20 dollars on hand in RMB), only to be disappointed by the lack of a bank machine of any kind in the 'international airport'.  I went out to the bus area to wait for the 1 (after calling to get the bus company to hold my bag for me at the office in Zibo), only to be enthusiastically waved over by the young driver.

I was in a small group of people, who were all shepherded into a taxi - which I was confidently assured was going to Zibo for ten dollars each.

Now, the first thing you often do in a Chinese taxi is look at the driver's license picture - prominently displayed in the front of the cab.  This guy's licence was not in accord with the female-ness of the driver, but we didn't complain too much; people borrow people's cars from time to time.

She tore out of the airport and immediately pulled into a gas station.  This makes sense, as it's about a 90 minute drive, but after a short exchange with the attendant she motored out onto the highway.  I breathed as much of a sigh of relief as one can in a car full of oniony Chinese men.

As I reflected on the circumstances that led me to this position..... she stopped driving.  In the middle (left lane, too) of a 3 lane overpass bridge.  My first thought was that she had run out of gas, and my second was that I was going to die.  Semi-trucks and overloaded buses were veritably whizzing by, blowing their horns and generally informing us that we were going to die if we didn't move....move she did, at a glacial 45-degree angle pace across the busy lanes to get a better vantage point of her missed turnoff.  It is easily the most terrified I have been in China, and all I could do was put my face in my hands.

My taxi driver, who was borrowing someone else's car, had no idea how to drive to the next town over.

We got there, and I got my bag back, but it was a fitting final point in this inane quest to overcome Chinese incompetence.

Finish line syndrome, part one.

Hello to my literally tens of readers!

I'm writing on an overcast Saturday in order to feel semi-productive, and because the act of writing will take some time.  Time, I have.

Oh, I don't have 100% free time as I'm working (with attendant marking/planning), but I have more than I need.  If I could, I would bend time and space to make the next month or so a month of 18 hour days rather than the usual 24.  There is a simple reason for this....

It's almost go time.

At a certain point I realised that there was a decent number of holidays coming up in addition to the requisite weekends, and that I hadn't used the majority of my 'sick days' yet, so I did the math on what percentage of days I would be spending on the job.  It was enviable.  I began a countdown.

Mr. Hoochador and I swung a deal where prospective students would be tested on some Saturdays, and we could leave a few days early.  The testing process involves dressing decently and standing around for a while, then speaking cursorily to each student in English to see who can actually say anything.  Easy as, bru.

At this point there are less than 40 days until I get to go back to the land of everything.  Fantastic.  I've been doing more than just marking time, however.

I went to Tokyo for the second time this year, this time for 6 nights.  I saw a baseball game, went to a concert of an all-girl Japanese band, drank beer while watching children's television (surreal experience) because they spoke slow enough to me to understand, and visited parks around the city.  I also went to Ochanomizu.

Ochanomizu is a district that used to be famous only as a source for tea-water (hence the name), but now serves as the destination for anybody interested in shopping for an electric guitar.  Within 200 meters there were about 9 guitar shops, each of which holding far more than your average Long & McQuade, and all just packed with amazing guitars.

I went in search of a late 70's 'lawsuit era' made in Japan guitar, and found a 1977 Greco EG-900 for 85,000 yen, or about $850 give or take a few percentage points.  It is a heavy vintage beast of a guitar, that then became a source of significant anxiety.

I was flying back to China on a Delta airlines flight with a smallish plane, which meant it was going to be touchy as to whether I could get the guitar into the cabin as a carry on.  Chinese people, you may know, absolutely load up on whatever they can when they return to their country, as goods of the type they want are either entirely absent, corrupted in some way by Chinese greed/lack of morals regarding profit/health/etc., or prohibitively expensive.  Thus, it became rather important that I get onto the plane quickly.

The girls running the gate could not understand the fact that I was carrying a guitar almost twice their age which was unlikely to react positively to pressure changes or the very fast downward/upward swings in temperature that accompany take off/landing if something is down with the baggage.  It's a giant heavy piece of wood (probably mahogany?) with a nitrocellulose finish that I didn't feel like seeing cracked like so much ice, so I attempted to 'out-Chinese' the Chinese by lining up first.

After the first class passengers/Delta club members and other similar people got on they called for zone one boarders (happily, my zone), at which I strode forward with ticket in hand to get beeped through.  Down a gangway at a moderate pace until just about ready to turn onto the arm that connects to the plane before...

"Excuse me sir, we would like to do a random security check on you.  If you could put your bags on this table and sit down, it won't take long."

I complied (obviously), and watched the lady pointlessly unzip my bag, refuse my offer to open my large guitar hardcase, and somewhat incredulously took off my shoes so they could be fondled.  My peripheral vision registered the other passengers filing onto the plane at a regular pace as this farce unfolded, and it was with relief that I took my leave to scamper onto the plane.

Happily I found room for the guitar above where I was sitting by the simple expedient of putting someone's small bag on top of it.  The guitar got to China in fine condition (perfect being impossible for a 36 year old guitar - part of the appeal.  I won't cry if I nick it on something), after a slight jostle through train stations and taxis.

So now I have an excellent vintage guitar, and the looming prospect of flying with it again, as I plan on taking it back to Canada to join my clan of excellent guitars.  More and more to look forward to, if I can somehow make the next 39 days give up on existence.  The count continues!

Pineapple pictorial

I just survived a six-day week at the school - necessitated by the silly way they organise public holidays here (give you a day off, surround it with a couple more 'free' days off that you make up for the next week) - and in order to keep my sanity, as well as illustrate aspects of the local climate, I devised an experiment.

After lunch on sunday one of the students came up to me with a quarter pineapple on a stick.  I said thank you, but had just stuffed my face and didn't really want it, so I decided to put it outside on the A/C unit outside my staff room window.

 

 

It was cut into an interesting swirly shape, and smelled strongly while it leaked juice on my office chair en route to the window.  The flag I created from the stick we eat the indeterminate fried meats during lunch with.

 

 

 The next day the dryness had begun to take its toll.  Here we can see the inner porous matrices of the pineapple beginning to emerge as China sucks the life out of this piece of fruit.  Of interest: at no point were any insects or birds seen during the experiment.

 

By this point you can see my flag-making skills beginning to progress, as the fruit recedes further and further into itself.  More difficult to see? The fine layer of dust that in beginning to discolour things.

 

 

Day four brought more of the same dessication, and the advent of the stain from the leaked moisture becoming more apparent as everything raisins up further and further.  Day 1's flag blew away, alas.

 

 

On the last day of the experiment we were left with something that felt approximately like cheese if you squeezed it.  Why would someone squeeze it, you ask?  There's certainly no way anyone in the staff room pitched it out the window.  No way.

                                         Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....perma-soot!

Concerning urban peasants

China, points out almost every demographic writer who clichés themselves onto the topic, has a huge peasant population.  I live in a heavily urbanized city of approximately 4 million people, though, so it stands to reason that I wouldn’t have any idea what they are like.  I mean, what defines a peasant? For me growing up, peasants were just what you used to either sap moats during sieges or roadblock approaching troops so you can arrow them from afar.

I did a google image search for ‘Chinese peasant’, and this crazy old man came up.  He’s interesting in that he is wearing a green hat (something my students assured me means that his wife likes to run around on him), but otherwise completely typical: wrinkly as hell, with at least one exaggerated facial feature.  This man has giant ears.  He can probably hear your thoughts.

I do, of course, see scraggly old be-wrinkled men all the time, but I can’t say that he represents the dominant image in my mind of the urban peasant.  No, for that we must turn to the completely superfluous street-cleaning person.

There are a thousand variations on the following theme present, one presumes, in every provincial town: an old person (often female, or at least female-esque) is put into the kind of numbered jumpsuit you’d expect first-time space-campers don before climbing into the spinning vomit gyroscope, or whatever it is actually called.  Then they have a broom of some kind – which can mean straw, bits of shredded old clothing, or plastic strands of indeterminate origin – in front of them as they walk, knocking dust up into their own lungs.

On particularly unlucky days I will have one of them precede me to work by about 20 metres or so, which means I need to perform a 30-40 second breath hold while walking at top speed to outrace the carcinogenic death clouds that these workers raise in place of their government-restricted children.  They are responsible for leaf collection (for immediate burning), garbage collection (delayed burning), and taking abuse from imperious Chinese people who believe that they have offended their dignity in some way. 

Once at the grocery store I had my right elbow bustled into by a vegetable peasant, who was silently fleeing towards the storeroom behind the meat counter; in his wake was a pudgy six-footer wearing khakis who had class warfare on his mind.  My great debate over whether to trip him up outlasted my opportunity, alas, as I watched him disappear after the man at top speed into the cold storage unit.  Keep this in mind the next time the deli girl at the grocery store gives you too much ham: YOU CAN JUST CHASE HER FOR RETRIBUTIVE VIOLENCE.

They’re everywhere, doing the jobs that require nothing (standing and stamping receipts listlessly as you leave the store, hitting trees with rakes so that leaves will fall off for more convenient burning, etc.) but the ability to show up and breathe dusty air, and completely bum the shit out of anyone from more developed countries.

This, I believe, is the group from whence you see the most incidences of toothlessness, spitting on escalators, and off-handedly instructing toddlers to simply defecate in public parks.  It’s completely insane in a way, but it is the fate of uneducated rusticarians the world over.  I mean, it ensures that when I place anything recyclable outside it will disappear quickly, but there must be something more meaningful these people could be tasked on than the kind of stuff we would outsource to shitty 80’s-era robots?

Perhaps I need to spend more time in the country, where they can be seen fishing for carp while simultaneously throwing plastic garbage into the river.  God damn, there are so many things you have to block out here sometimes to avoid becoming horrifically depressed… less than 3 months until the big reprieve!

Alright, enough.

Enough with the shitting on China already, I can't help but self-admonish. 

My tone has been wildly negative for the last little while because I've had to examine the state of things here as closely as my laser-focus obsessive brain possibly can.  Why?

The decision whether to come back here next year came up recently, so I needed to weigh some pros/cons.  It's kind of a big call, as I don't see myself as the type to take off partway into a contract - unlike certain Ontarians...  if I decide to sign on again, I'm committing to another full year of annoyances to go with the good stuff.  Let's get mathy!

Cons:
1.  It's easy to get annoyed by wildly illogical things that happen here all the time.  I don't look at it as an issue of cultural difference as much as an insatiable desire to cut every corner possible at all times.  Just remember, every product you get that was made in China is 'EXPORT QUALITY', and every odd thing you see a Chinese person do outside of China is 'MAGNIFIED BY 1.4 BILLION' here.

2.  This place can't be good for your health.  The water is hard as hell, you're randomly assailed by sewer gas anywhere/anytime, and the air can be incredibly chewy from time to time.  It takes extra effort to eat well, and to resist the urge to anger-drink on occasion.  People still smoke everywhere here, including (but not limited to) restaurants, on bikes, banks, enclosed train/bus stations, and in front of you wherever you are unfortunate enough to have to walk... it's all part of how...

3.  The country is arrested in a culture of semi-permanent adolescence.  Teenagers can be selfish, destructive to themselves/the environment, really into vomiting in public from drinking, and obsessed with keeping up with the Wangs when it comes to material goods use/consumption.  A guy who has lived in town for 7 years once told me that given the choice between a knockoff Gucci bag and an indestructibly well-constructed handmade italian leather attache, the Chinese would take the 'Gucci' bag 100% of the time.  I thought "generalization!", but have subsequently seen nothing to contradict this.

Pros:
1.  Loot.  It's pretty unlikely I would be walking into a full-time job at home, let alone one that pays all my accomodation/bills/etc.  I get free dinners with all the beer one could possibly need on a regular basis too, which doesn't hurt.  I still owe a shitload to Canada student loans too.. good times.

2.  I've 'figured out' virtually everything I'm going to need to know to survive here another year.  I know how to get all the various foods/drinks I want (alas for milk, which I will enjoy before leaving YVR at the end of June - and then probably go into stomach convulsions from drinking something healthful), I've scoped out a few restaurants that are easy to eat at (and am making inroads to tricky ones by getting menus translated etc.), I now know exactly what level of entertainment to expect on a weekend, and I know a cadre of expat townies I can see when I want to speak some English.  Long sentences!

3.  Travel opportunities.  I'm going to Japan for the second time already this year at the end of April (flight= about $450 return), which is fantastic.  Thailand was hot and delicious.  I've seen some provincial highlights and am going to go visit friends in Bejing from my ed program sometime soon.  Imagine what I could do with another year...  Korea? India? Tibet? Australia? Who knows.

4.  Stuff.  I have improved this apartment (added u-bends to sinks, got an oven, grew plants, etc.) significantly since I got here, and could come back from Canada with any products/light foods/etc that I feel like I'm missing (shoes!) after having left bulk stuff here for future use.

It looks like a 4-3 margin, and without even factoring in the career advancing experience I can garner with another year it wasn't that hard of a choice.

I'm in.

I'm in for another year of wishing I lived in a country of people forced into competence by the fact that they could possibly lose their jobs.  I'm in for another year of delayed gratification, if I define gratification as being composed of getting to do the vast majority of my hobbies - like breathing clear air and mainlining Mexican food.  I'm in because despite all of the annoying things that China has to offer, I can almost completely control the level of their involvement in my life.

I'm meeting interesting people, stockpiling 'WTF' stories for when I reconnoiter with whatever friends remember me when I return (I'm thinking single digits), and enjoying the satisfaction of living an 'adult' existence for the first time in my life. 

I owe it all to Chinese people being spectacularly lazy and bad at English...so maybe I should stop bitching about it.  I mean, I won't, but I could.  From time to time.

See you at the end of June, trees/nature/air.  Who wants to go salmon fishing with me when I return?

What's that, you say?

                I’ve been settling back in in a fashion roughly approximating ‘nicely’ since my nearly month-long exodus from the PRC.  After an initial comedown period of disappointment and disillusionment I’ve re-established a connection with the reason I’m here after all (LOOT), and found my way back into my old routine of attempting to eat well/stay hydrated to combat the worst effects of The China.

                This isn’t to say that things really get that much easier here.  At the core of every outing to the grocery store/restaurant/mall/etc lies the same issue: I will have to attempt to make myself understood, and understand in kind.  The fact that I have collected some elemental mandarin since I’ve come here helps less than you would think, though, because it puts you in decided danger of thinking you might be understood when you speak.  Explanation!

                Mandarin is a language that dearly holds on to its multiple-intonation format.  They literally can’t get enough of it; it’s the reason you can’t even pretend to speak mandarin without feeling like some kind of closet racist.  If you don’t do all the crazy ups, downs, recovered dips, and high level tones *just so* you will be looked at like a dog that is trying out its speaking legs for the first time… and not even some kind of adorable Hanna-Barbera creation, either.

                Part of the issue is the antiquated (yet quizzically still clung to) language, but a larger part is the near complete lack of multiculturalism here.  Now, you might say, “what do you mean, look at all the white people on the billboards?” – a semi-valid point, in a way.  I don’t hold the fact that the entire world seems to want to get ‘a bit closer’ to white people as valid multiculturalism, though: Orlando Bloom and an endless succession of anonymous blondes aren’t bastions of cross-cultural exchange – they’re just sexy as all getup.

                It’s hard to even come to visit somebody in China.  They need to send a letter of invitation dictating their address, job, and own visa status before you can even be considered for a visitor permit – after which you can stay in the country for no more than 30 consecutive days on a typical tourist visa.  You think you can come live in China? You better have a post-secondary degree in a field that the Chinese literally CAN’T do to even think about applying.

                Plus you have to remember that as a result of decades of unbridled (by reason, empathy, or environmentalism) development, much of the country is barely habitable by comfortable western standards; those with any lung, allergy, stomach, or immune issues have no business doing more than crossing the airspace.  What’s that, you’re a vegan/vegetarian? Get out of here you wuss, before you are forced to eat the boniest possible fish (which is the selection process for fish served across the country…jesus I miss halibut).

                Thus people of the Caucasian persuasion are actively discouraged from coming to live in China.  You’ve got to be a particularly hardy brand of weirdo to make it more than one day (the length of time a teacher recently lasted at our school… ah, Ontario, you make good people) in this country, and even then it’s only despite the best efforts of the Chinese service industry. 

                I’m not trying to say that helpful people don’t exist, I’m trying to say that the vast majority of people have no idea what to do with someone that doesn’t speak the wacky language like their neighbour.  This is why ‘po-tone-hwa’, or however you want to spell it, even exists: making effort to divine what someone who can’t exactly intone your way(even if they’re just from a different part of China) is seen as too much work for any day ending in ‘day’.

                In Canada it is common to encounter somebody with a thick accent (or no English at all) who wants something.  You think about the situation, use simple/slow language, point at things with your hands, and usually sort things out in a remarkably short/easy period of time.  In my experience here, the preferred way of dealing with such situations is to keep your hands at your side and speak mandarin increasing in speed by the moment.  This leaves the hapless foreigner again using their skills, but to help themselves through a situation – which is a situation that doesn’t have to be! 

                It’s not the peoples’ faults at all: clearly they’re not the leading intellectual lights (products of Chinese school system, currently working at KFC etc.) and they are completely unused to helping anyone who isn’t part of the clan.  Aggressive mono-culturalism (hello, ‘southern Chinese’ mountain people) has hobbled peoples’ ability to relate, and the breath of relief when people finally see us turn away is as palpable as it is audible.

                It’s just the way things are here.  If I ask my class about why such things are never addressed, or encouraged to change, the more glib amongst them announce “this is CHINA!” (or more commonly ‘the China’ after hearing about me/Hoochador’s go-to explanation for anything odd here).  If you can’t get used to constant disappointment over the little things – that don’t have to be that way, but damned if they are going to change – you don’t have a lot of business here. 

Thankfully I can laugh most such inconveniences off – if only a few hours after the fact.

A stark contrast

 It has been a little difficult to collect my thoughts about China in the last while; part of this can be chalked up to the general busy-ness that accompanies the job, but the greater part really falls into the lethargy/depression camp.  I wouldn’t say that I’ve become actually personally or professionally depressed – it’s just that the ‘what the hell!’ moments that still occur on a near daily basis have led to more sighs than tapping keys.  Allow me to explain.

 I went to Japan for the greater part of my spring holiday period, and it turns out that I both love and hate that country.  Allow me to explain, with the help of some visual aides:

 This is a picture of the gates that organise admission to subway cars in Tokyo.  When the train comes it stops exactly in front of the doors, which then open to allow people out.  Meanwhile, people have been standing in straight lines in front of these doors waiting to get in… once the people leave, they file on.  The whole thing is remarkably efficient.

 It was fun to watch before I realised that it was throwing China into a bleak relief.  In a similar situation in China everyone would be clustered around the gates, which would be stuck open (or operated by a dirty piece of rope) and covered in spit marks.  Once the train stopped 9 inches off the target the fight would begin, and with it the concurrent seagull-like screaming of Chinese people moving inordinate amounts of baggage behind them on the quality of dolly that you see only in fish market back rooms in the real world.  The whole thing would take 3 times as long, and given that it is public transit you would be bathed in halitosis the entire time.

 This is a picture of the canopy along the main pedestrian thoroughfare in Meiji Jingu park, Tokyo.  What you see are wonderful old trees and blue sky over an expansive walking area as well-constructed as it is meticulously clean.  What you can’t hear is the serene atmosphere, quiet but for the hushed speech of friends walking and the birds of the forest.  It’s one of the biggest tourist draws in Tokyo, and always busy.

 This would be different in China, or I’ll eat my Yomiuri Giants hat.  The path would be crumbling due to the constant passing of motor scooters and the ‘chinese mini-vans’ (three wheel motorbikes that have been encased to protect the rider from the elements, rather like a very dirty popemobile), and the trees would be a quarter the size – and leafless.  Every 20 yards or so there would be a stall selling plastic garbage or some kind or other, or some kind of food stand with a mechanized voice stridently proclaiming the same 8 words over and over on a 6 second loop.  Garbage would be everywhere it collected from the wind that the denuded trees couldn’t block, and toddlers would be running around in ass-less pants urinating and screaming about how great they are (one assumes).

 This view of Tokyo – I believe facing south east towards the rainbow bridge – was remarkable in that visibility (in this city of 13-14 million) stopped just short of the curvature of the earth.  The cars are kept under strict emission guidelines, the power for the city isn’t generated by burning coal, and the industries are kept in line by crazy things like environmental laws – rather than abject individualistic profit.

 Nijo-jo castle in Kyoto, the former residence of the Shogun.  This is an austere wooden building with some minimal gilding, and for some reason completely without hundreds of people smoking or inflatable red fake gates run by never-off air compression units you’d expect to see on an illegal Phillipino pearl diveboat.  Note, also, the blue skies.

 This river in Arashiyama, a western section of Kyoto, does not have homemade motorboats running up and down it at all times… nor is it full of never-decaying plastic bags or discount-brand beer cans.  There were many types of waterfowl, and a variety of fish living without the benefits of pens and nets – to keep people out, mind you, rather than fish in.

 Ah, a glimpse of bad English writing on a product… nothing better than an unnecessary use of ‘The’…though I wouldn’t put it past the Japanese to just be trying to be ironic.  Irony here is how you describe the sky, not a mode of address.  Also, hooray for DIP HOP.

 It was so great being in Japan (I’m currently considering a return in early May, as evidence of this), that it left me a bit dumbstruck on my return.  So many of the issues with everyday life in China could be ameliorated if anyone took a bit of pride in the products they make or the systems they devise for organisation/transport/etc… but everyone is too busy trying to make money and get places/RMB before others do to notice.

 The depression I felt upon returning from a country designed by – and for the easy use of – grown-ups to an embarrassing free-for-all was palpable, but receded with work and time.  I think I know what astronauts returning to the space station after a relaxing/luxurious recess back on earth might feel like now.  The first week you’d really be wanting that Caesar salad with the brick oven-baked focaccia bread, but eventually you’d settle back into your synthetic chow and do what must be done.

 Thus, I returned to The China.

Hands-free relief!!

Damnit.

I’ve been reading other ex-pat blogs of late, and clearly I need to pick up my game a little.  I tend to wait for inspiration to strike – then write accordingly – but when the extraordinary becomes banal, the volume of outrage-related writing tends to taper off.  I could say I was too busy to write, and anybody else teaching in town who covets my position might expect that, but it’s not really the case.  Call it a lack of inspiration, perspiration, or personal variation: the end result is still the same.

It’s not like I don’t see things on a near-everyday basis that make me shake my head, either…. Two days ago I saw an approximately 60 year-old man blowing a snot rocket in public.  This isn’t pleasant, but it’s not the most outrageous thing I’ve seen on its own merits.  Usually it wouldn’t even earn a second thought: this is, after all, the land where toddlers run around in ass-less chaps so they can pee wherever they see fit.

No, the reason it stuck in my visual craw is that he was riding an escalator at the time.  Why is that weird?  I don’t know - it just is.  I didn’t know there was some kind of unwritten social compact we have in the rest of the world about blowing your nose all over escalators, but apparently we do: this is what living in ‘The China’ helps you discover.

Some people would say that the lesson is to appreciate the things you had, so as to greater love them upon your (inevitable, I’d say) return.  They’re not wrong, but they’re missing the point a bit.

I’ve often said that studying Latin helped me learn a little about Latin, and a lot about the English language.  This experience is rapidly becoming roughly analogous to what you come to learn when you live in comparatively exotic lands: how exactly your own society works, and why.

Does the old man emptying his sinuses all over the treads of the escalator change your day in any way?  I’d argue not, because I hardly ever go home and clean the bottom of my shoes with my tongue; rather, it’s just another one in a series of ‘wait, what?’ moments that define existence in a wildly crowded developing nation.  China likes to talk a good game about being a modern nation, but is still largely populated by an ‘old-world’ approach to life.  Traditionalism is a nice pastime, I suppose, but there are places traditional activities might be curtailed…

Escalators, for instance.