| Throw You Like You Were Dice |
[Dec. 26th, 2009|07:57 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Marty Feldman Eyes | ] |
How does one pronounce 'Onegin'?
Got hit on by Zero Mostel's uglier older brother the other day. It has been said I should not be so judgemental of people, but, no; he was vile. "China is a beautiful place for a white man," being the sentence that tipped me off. Blehhh.
Ah, I just learned why I so dislike the Steve Miller Band Song "Joker" and why I always think it sounds like it's not quite the song it wants to be: it's not. Total rip-off of Allen Toussaint's Soul Sister, which I grew up listening to on a mixtape. Just found it online and was amazed to find I still know all the lyrics, despite not having thought of the song in about fifteen years.
Meh. Trying to write a story (about nine years in the making) of a bunch of ballet students in Spain to study Flamenco getting killed by black-market organ suppliers. Have no idea where I'm going with it. Anyone want to help me work on the plot? |
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| huh |
[Dec. 23rd, 2009|11:51 pm] |
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Doesn't feel like Christmas. Not that I'm unhappy (kind of wish I were home, but whatever). I had a nice day getting a long massage. Hooked up with Batman again, and it was great in that way it always is when you see someone you never stopped loving for the first time in months. So I'm all right, but it doesn't feel like Christmas. |
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| toy from the 80s |
[Dec. 21st, 2009|12:14 am] |
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What were those plush bears that had the nose that was a hard plastic sphere with glitter or sequins in it, and the tummy had an air bladder so if you squeezed it it blew air through the nose sphere and made the glitter fly around? |
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| Questions |
[Dec. 19th, 2009|03:13 pm] |
If a Westerner asks a Chinese person anything about their (Chinese) culture, the Chinese person is overwhelmingly likely to use the rhetoric "Culture Shock" or "Cultural Difference" to explain the issue. Since asking questions in the first place is mildly disrespectful in China, people get on the defensive and assume they are being indirectly criticized. Saying "it's a difference in culture!" conveniently closes the discussion, but it doesn't address the question. For example, when I first came to China, I asked the question,
"Why do so many Chinese people stop in their tracks for a few moments before getting on an escalator?"
Now, because the average Chinese person is so convinced that we foreigners secretly look down on everything in China, if you ask that question you'll get a lot of red faces and people laughing, "it's culture shock!"
Bullshit. There's an answer. A real, sensible, measurable answer. Which is: the people who have trouble negotiating the escalator tend to have grown up in the countryside, and did not use escalators as a part of their everyday life. If the person is older than 30, they may not have known escalators existed until a few (like, 5) years ago. Additionally, they were probably not raised in an environment which encouraged dreaming about a more technologically-savvy future, so they are presented with both the new technology and the new realization that they are about to use the technology.
I used to also wonder a lot about young pretty women marrying older, uglier men. This could be explained away by saying "the woman is marrying the man for financial security" but the truth is that younger men in Shanghai make more money than older men, and even then it doesn't make sense when you work it out mathematically. An uneducated woman in Shanghai can easily make 3 or 4 thousand RMB a month, and a man can make at least that. A "rich" older man in Shanghai usually does NOT make more than 6 or 7 thousand RMB, so two "poor" people who love each other could make more money than the supposedly rich man. The difference in money between these two marriages is NOT enough to buy a bigger apartment, or even to buy an apartment in a better neighborhood or closer to a metro stop. It is roughly enough to eat out for dinner once or twice a week, or to bargain less hard for a fake designer bag. So for a long time I didn't get why this style of marriage persists to strongly in China, but finally after puzzling it over for a couple of years and asking the children of these marriages, I've come up with the beginnings of an answer: a family with a working wife is considered immediately less successful in traditional China than a family with a stay-at-home wife. A motorcycle cabbie might take home 800RMB a month, but if his wife doesn't have a job they will get a certain measure of respect that might be withheld from another couple making more money combined. Also, a beautiful woman is encouraged to "marry an ugly man" in the hopes that she will be more valued by him because she is so obviously better-looking. There is also an idea that a REALLY ugly husband will be more faithful (because nobody else wants him).
I know these questions have answers, and the answer is not "because that's how it's done." Everything has a story behind it. If you think garlic is called garlic because "that's just what it's called" then you're ignorant of the reality, which is that 'gar' relates to 'gore' or 'triangular' and 'lic' comes from 'leek'. It all has a story.
I have not been able to answer the following questions:
1. Why, when I tell people I am leaving China because I can't find a good job, do people almost unanimously say "you must send out your resume and go to job interviews!"
2. Why does the poultry-selling woman on the street remove the wings of the bird first, and then the skin of the body, before finally killing the bird?
3. How do cooks and bakers differentiate between "butter" "margarine" "cream" "whipped cream" "frosting" and "hydrogenated-oil-based whipped topping" when all six things are called by the same name in Chinese?
4. If the temperature in a person's bedroom is routinely below freezing in the winter, why don't they turn on the air conditioner? Why don't they buy a warm blanket?
5. Why is it acceptable for a Chinese person to pick his nose and deposit the leavings on the hand-rail of the escalator, but not to pick his teeth without covering his mouth?
6. What is the meaning of 'maybe' in the sentences, "maybe my brother works for KPMG" and "maybe our anniversary is July 20th"? This happens only when Chinese people speak English; they don't use the 'maybe' in Chinese.
7. Why, when I asked a woman, "你等得厕所吗?" (Are you waiting for the bathroom?) was it acceptable for her to respond, "你很胖!" (You're really fat!)?
If you read these questions and you think "Iris is trying to indirectly suggest that China is a shithole filled with backwards people" then you're kind of missing the point, and not giving China enough credit. And if Chinese people get defensive when I ask these questions, it says more about their own cultural shame and insecurity than it does about my dissatisfaction with the country. If I thought China were a shithole I wouldn't live here. It is BECAUSE I love China that I want to know these things. |
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