People

A funny thing happened a couple of weeks ago when I was going to meet Darren Rowan at the Suzhou train station.   I flagged down a cab in front of the apartment and climbed in the front passenger side.  (It's much easier in the front to hold up a map and point if the driver doesn't understand my bad Chinese.)  After we were on our way, I got out my cell phone to check for messages. After a minute or so, I felt something weird crawling on my arm.  I danced a little to make it go away but it kept coming back.  So I looked to see what kind of insect might be there.

When I looked up, I saw that the taxi driver was stroking the hair on my arm with his index finger.  Luckily, we were stopped at a light.  His face had the rapt look of a 6 month-old baby who's caught the family cat for first time.  He didn't even flinch when I looked at him.  He just kept stroking and smiling.  Then the light turned green and he went back to driving.  Driving, of course, requires both hands - one for the wheel and the other for the horn.

After he got on the highway and was comfortably going 90 miles an hour, he held up his arm to show me.  Girls in my third grade class had more hair on their arms than he did.  And he was no freak in that department.  I've never seen a Chinese man with even a hint of fuzz on his arm.  When we got off the freeway and stopped at the first light, he gave me the gesture that I knew was coming.  So I pulled down the collar of my shirt to show him my chest.  His eyes became huge.

Now, I feel pretty safe to say that this cab driver was not motivated by some weird perversion.  The amazement on his face was too innocent to be faked.  I'm sure he'd seen Westerners before. You can't drive a cab in Suzhou and not get a Westerner from time to time.  But maybe this was the first time he got one up close in the front seat.  Maybe he'd heard from family or friends that Westerners are different in a hairy sort of way.   Maybe this was his first chance to find out if it was truth or urban legend.

I don't claim to know much about what culture is.  But in China, I've come to realize that a biggest part of the culture is what it's not.   China is NOT a nation of immigrants. 

All the countries in the Americas are mostly populated by people whose ancestors came from someplace else.  Not just the US, but Canada and Mexico and South America are all a hodgepodge of European and Asian and African and Latin peoples..all mixed in with the indigenous peoples.   Even the old countries of Europe have sizable populations of people from other places.  The history of these countries over the last 2000 years is mainly about the invasions and migrations and shifting of national boundaries.  The populations in these countries are painted with a pallet of many skin hues, heights, shapes, weights, and degrees of swarthiness.  We're used to seeing people who look different to us.

In China, on the other hand, the vast majority of people are swimming in the same gene pool.  These are people whose ancestors have been in these parts for a long long time.  Over 90 percent of the Chinese call themselves "Han" people.  They became called the Han people about 2000 years ago.  Not because they arrived 2000 years ago, but because it took them about 2000 years after they arrived to decide upon a name.  (For comparison, 2000 years ago the British Isles still had invasions to come from the Saxons, the Vikings, and the Normans.)

Only about 8% of the population is classified as a non-Han minority of one type or another.  Some of these are indigenous peoples - offspring of isolated tribes back in the mountains.   Others are descended from Arab immigrants who came hundreds of years ago - mostly in Western China on the old Silk Road and a few others that came to the port cities in the East with sea trade.  But even these people have assimilated to the point where I couldn't pick them out of a police line-up.  The locals can spot them in an instant, though, because "they don't have a Han face".

Now, at this point I was all ready to go down the road of deep, insightful, and clever observations about cultural differences.  But upon re-reading the draft it was obvious that I'm not that clever.   What I really want to do is tell you a couple of more stories.  Things that I didn't know about Chinese people that, quite frankly, surprised me.

The first has to do with the "third rail" polite discussion - skin color.  It starts back in April when the weather first started to become sunny.  I noticed then that, every time the sun came out, the women would open up their umbrellas.  I figured it was to avoid the heat.  Then I noticed people riding their scooters with long-sleeved shirts on backwards.  At first I figured that was to avoid getting bug splatter on the work clothes.  Again, I noticed it was always women.  Never the men.

Someone finally explained to me that it was to prevent from getting tanned.   You see, light skin is considered attractive - not just in China but all over Asia.  The paler and more ghostlike, the better.  So Chinese women avoid the sun like the plague....or like a vampire would.  Not all of them, but a lot of them.  Also, the stores are full of skin whitening products such as pearl powder or Pond's whitening cream.  If you don't want to go the chemical route, then you can also buy cover-ups for your arms (essentially long tubes of cloth) and hats with huge visors.

The second story has to do with social drinking and socializing in general.  You see, another thing I noticed early on is that there are not many bars in Suzhou.  The few bars there are are mainly hangouts for the expats.  In Hainan, I was invited to a poker game with some Chinese colleagues and figured I better show up with a six-pack.  When I did, they all looked at me like I was crazy.  You never seen anyone sipping on a beer while playing cards or Mah Jong.

The Chinese are NOT all members of the temperance society - they can put away more alcohol than a flunking fraternity brother on a Saturday night.  But it has to be the proper social situation.  And the two most proper social situations are at meals and at karaoke.

The Chinese are very sociable people and a meal is the most sociable of all social occasions.   At home and at restaurant, the typical meal is served family style.  Everyone sits around the same table and plates of food are piled up in the center.  Everyone shares.  While they share, everyone talks.  And if you're male and not driving then you drink with your meal.  Beer and rice wine are traditional.  Grape wine is becoming more fashionable these days.  If it's really sociable then (heaven help you) the baijiu, or white liquor, comes out and the toasting begins.  The traditional Chinese toast is GanBei, or empty cup.  It's not so much toast-making as it is stating an expectation.  (The women, by the way, don't drink alcohol.  At least not in the settings I've been in.  Maybe they would on a date or at home with family and close friends.  When I've been out, though, it's always tea or fresh squeezed fruit drinks.)

Getting a little tipsy is OK, expected even.  But if anyone gets drunk then they've made a mistake.  And when dinner is over, it's over.  Unless you go for Karaoke.

Karaoke is hugely popular here.  I'd always thought of it as a Japanese thing, but the Chinese are easily as crazy about their karaoke .  (Though Kalaok is the way it's been spelled.  It's pronounced ka-la-o-k.)  KTV is the most popular karaoke chain in China.  You see KTVs everywhere.  As in Japan, the karaoke joints in China are built like hotels - all private rooms where you go with a party of people to sing the night away.  You ring the waiters to bring you food and beverages.  Everyone is expected to sing.  And regardless of how badly you sing, you will always be told that you are very good.  The Chinese people are wonderful that way.

The photo at top was taken at a karaoke outing one night after dinner.  You can't see it, but the wall that the people are facing has a big TV screen on it where the lyrics are displayed.  Some of the folks are quite good.  The fellow shown singing in the photo was exceptional - he was belting out a Bon Jovi song and hitting all the high notes when this was taken.  The guy in the upper left corner was also really good.  He did some Chinese-pop-love-ballads that would melt the heart of any teen-age girl anywhere.  I asked how they became so good and they told me that university students spend many week-end nights...sometimes all night...hanging out with friends at the KTV.  (How do you get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice!)

So there you go.  In the end, there are more similarities than differences between Chinese people and Westerners....or any people of the world for that matter.  All people love their families and want the best for their children and want to enjoy a peaceful life and like to complain about the government.  But there are a few differences, and learning more about them makes our time here an ongoing adventure.