Flying on Camus airways to the land of George Orwell's mid-youth

The airline attendant for China Southern airlines typed in my passport information for check-in, a strange, stiff purple bow restricting her downward head movements.
"I'm sorry, you are not on this flight." the lady said.
"Yes, I am. Look again." I said, trying to ignore the ominous, but oh-so-usual sense that something that could be so easy was going to be blown up into a huge ordeal.
Click-Click-Click.  The attendant continuously typed for a few minutes.
"I'm sorry, your flight has been cancelled."
"No, it hasn't.  Please look again." I measured my words.
"I'm sorry, that flight is not happening today. Your flight is maybe tomorrow." She informed me.  I silently handed her the printed itinerary of my flight, printed out shortly before I left for the airport.  This itinerary conflicted with everything she had just told me.  She looked at the document, then looked back at me.
"Can I please see the visa for Myanmar and your passport?"
"Click-click-click" She typed away for a minute, quickly conferred with a coworker, then handed me my ticket.  "Enjoy your flight."
Stunned at my good luck, I made my way towards the gate.

8 hours later in Kunming

"I'm sorry, you are not on this flight." The attendant informed my friend, Bridget.
"I'm sorry, your flight has been cancelled."
"I'm sorry, you are on the flight tomorrow."
"Enjoy your flight."

Almost verbatim, the entire conversation repeated itself, with the same result.

So many questions. Starting with,  Why did you think that flight was cancelled? And if so, why were you checking people into a non-existent flight? Nothing made any sense, nor followed any sort of logical linear thinking.  But we were not ones to investigate our tiny miracle too closely, we clutched our tickets and headed towards our gate before the computer system could change its mind.

To Myanmar (Burma) ! And yes, that plane is as small as it looks.

Bridget and I tried to unravel the mystery as we boarded the tiny plane that would take us into Myanmar/Burma.  Even if we assumed the worst, that they were just lying to us at out of random malevolence, it still made no sense, as clearly, no one would have ever believed them after watching them check in everyone else in line onto that same flight.  The best working theory that we could come up with was cognitive dissonance amongst the staff; despite their actual knowledge that the flight did exist, they innately believed whatever the computer told them. But no harm, no foul, as we made it as we boarded the final leg of our flight to Myanmar.

Festivals, Fireworks, CCTV and Me

During our third glorious day in beautiful Yangshuo, we were preparing to return to our hotel.  We were exhausted from a day of riding bikes and rafting down rivers with our surly boatman.  Crossing the narrow street to find a cab, we were startled when James, a very friendly man who worked at our hotel, started to tell us about the festival that included fireworks.  Normally, I have no great love of fireworks, but in a nation that revels in huge, ostentatious shows of wealth and power, prides itself on inventing fireworks and has unlimited budgets for public displays, fireworks are not to be missed. The finale of the 4th of July fireworks in Washington, DC? That's the warm-up for any holiday, fesitval, or sale on fireworks in China. 

"渔火节在阳朔. 妳们的行文采写我了! The fish fire festival of yangshuo - CCTV interviewed me! "

Sure enough, these fireworks did not disappoint.  The sky was lit up with thousands of tiny flickering red lanterns, glass-like glimmering shards, waves of vivid neon hues and the flashes of cameras as everyone attempted to capture the magic. I have seen dozens of firework displays during my time in China, and this was the 2nd best one I had seen ( the 1st being the Spring Festival Lantern Day in Dalian, China).  I was so caught up in the fireworks, I didn't notice a TV crew slowly edging its way towards me until they were next to me.  They asked if they could interview me, and despite my misgivings that it would turn into a "Coerce/trick the foreigner into saying that China is better at __________ than _____________" interview, I acquiesced. 

Q: Where are you from? 

A: The United States

Q: What is your name? 

A: Su Mei En

Q: It is very good to have a Chinese name!

A: Thank you

Q: Did you come to Yangshuo just for the festival?

A: No, but I am very happy that I saw it

Q: What did you think of the Chinese fireworks?

A: Chinese fireworks are very beautiful!

Q: Do you have fireworks like this in your home country?

A: Not often

Q: Are Chinese fireworks better than American fireworks?

A: They are both very good

Q: But which country has better fireworks? Don't you think China's are better?

A: Yes, Chinese fireworks are very impressive

Q: Very good! Chinese fireworks are very famous.

Yes, I caved.  But in all honesty, their fireworks are better, and as the interviewers pressured me into answering the question, I heard a tone of subtle anxiety in their voices, waiting for my answer as to whether their firework display, an object of national pride, was better than the American version.  The longer one lives in China, the more one notices the undertones of these moments.  China is a country based on a culture of face (a complex version of reputation), and so rankings and public opinion matter a great deal to them.  Especially in their comparisons of China to the United States.   The fact is that the United States looms larger in the collective Chinese consciousness than China is in ours. 

Chinese people are brought up on a very unique brand of jingoism. Their values are taught in their elementary morality class, where they are taught the morals and beliefs as determined by the communist party. They are taught only the history that is relevant to China or history that makes other selected countries look bad, resulting that in all of my time teaching, I had yet to meet a single Chinese high schooler who knew what Guatemala or Serbia are, much less where they were on a map. This is not to say that the students were not intelligent, on the contrary, those students were exceptionally bright and eager to learn, just the victims of an education system that was created to serve the party interests. They are taught calculus and the superiority of the Chinese culture throughout history, and the aspects of their culture that support the current government, but not world history or sociology. They are taught in excessive detail the atrocities of the Japanese, while their own government's atrocities toward them are briefly mentioned as "the difficult years."  As such, there are gaping holes of information in their knowledge base, creating a Middle Kingdom-centric perspective.

Yet despite all the attempts of the government, most Chinese people know that all is not as CCTV and their government says.  Chinese people want clean air, clean water, food safety and less corruption.  The Party claims that a poor environment is the cost of a successful economy, but it hasn't been lost on the Chinese people that other countries have managed to succeed economically without destroying their environment to the point where it is unsafe to drink domestic water and breathe the air. 

At the same time, white skin and big eyes, foreign attributes, are considered to be the epitome of beauty, and Chinese magazines are filled with pictures and advertisements of products featuring foreigners and foreign products. Foreign products are considered to be of better quality and higher status, prompting an unfavorable comparison with Chinese products.

These are an uncomfortable facts that the party tries to reconcile by censoring and limiting the amount of foreign movies and TV shows, and by exhorting China's strength and wealth. In TV shows and movies, foreigners are almost always portrayed as either stupid or evil, and always lose to their Chinese counterpart.  In period movies, set in a time hundreds of years before the United States was founded, an American will inexplicably show up, to be taught the wisdom of the Chinese way. On the Chinese version of Iron Chef, they will pit master intense Chinese chefs with gleaming knives against rotund jolly french pastry chefs, and give them live snakes as the chosen ingredient. 

Therefore, any conversation with a new Chinese friend comes peppered with questions of comparison: Do you like Chinese food? What food is better, Chinese food or foreign food?  What do you think of Beijing, is it better than cities in the US? Even though these questions are subjective, based on opinons, there are clear right and wrong answers.

It is a dance, one that one has to play carefully: I love Chinese food, but I miss my hometown food (NEVER say you don't like Chinese food). I like Beijing, but I prefer Dalian and Washington DC because Beijing is too crowded. (throw in another, well-established beautiful city in China so as to show that your feelings on Beijing are not China-based, blame it on it being crowded- it doesn't insult Beijingren.) When they invite you to eat, they will inevitably want to take you to a foreign restaurant, but one must decline, saying something along the lines of  "We are in China, we should eat Chinese food!" When I first came to China, I broke all of these rules.  All the time. I had no idea.  Once I had a better understanding, I still often rebelled against the idea that I should say things I didn't agree with or think to make other people happy.  But soon I realized I didn't have to do that, I would be honest about things that made them happy, and not voice the negative things, (ie: Q: Do you like chicken feet? A: I know it is very nutritious, but I prefer fruit.)  Maybe it isn't the American way, but I wasn't in America anymore. 

The next day, I was happily surprised to see that my interview was cut to only one line: "Chinese fireworks are VERY beautiful!" 

Yangshuo and the Karst Mountains

view full image

"Yangshuo "

A day in Beijing Traffic

view full image

"What a predicament! #有爱和伤心"

Benefits of living next to the Russian Embassy in Beijing

In both Beijing and Washington DC, I lived very close to the Russian embassy. In Beijing, I literally live .2 miles from it, meaning that I am more fortunate than the rest of my fellow expats, in that when I need to quickly run to a little shop for snacks, instead of having to choose between a selection of chicken feet, dried meat jerky, fried fruit and green tea, I have a selection of caviar, dried salmon, cmyetyana and caramel/fruit tea, foods that I have come to adore since my study abroad in Russia.  Most importantly, the basic expat essentials: coffee, milk, unsweetened bread ( yes, sweetened bread is the norm in China) and cheese, are the most reasonably priced in the two tiny Russian shops, as compared to the rest of the expat shops.  It seems that the only foreigners that are not regularily upcharged in China are Russians. When I was traveling through Manzhouli and Hailaier, the prices I received when they believe that I was a Russian were substantially lower in comparison when they believed I was an American. 

view full image

Isn't the Russian embassy pretty? At night, when it is lit up, it reminds me of a library.  So pretty! 

798, Beijing's art district

view full image

"#sidecarlifestyles #有爱和伤心"

Part 1: An Ode to China

As all goods things, must, I suppose, come to an end, my time in China is finishing up.  It's been a little bit hard, very unexpected and completely out of my control, but I am very happy that I was able to return to China to leave my job and say my goodbyes properly.

Today, as I walked out of my job for the last time, a rickshaw cut me off, as they always do, and I thought, only three more weeks until I never see a rickshaw again.  And then I realized,  I only have three more weeks in China.  A favorite hobby of expats is to complain about the things we don't like about China.  Most foreigners don't do it maliciously, we make fun of it the way we would mock things about our own hometown, but it is a topic that bonds expatriates together and thus, it comes up a lot.  So, for the next few weeks, I am going to talk about all the things I have loved about China and my life here.  

1.  Music.  Everywhere.  All the time.  At this moment,  a fife or recorder is playing a lone strand of a sad, disjointed song.  Last night? Don't Stop Believing by Journey was being played on repeat, I think at the Naga Business karoke club/harem that I live next to.  At least twice a week, my heart suddenly gets heavy and I experience melancholy, caused by the serene chords Moonlight Sonatra drifting into my living room.  Music can be heard everywhere, at any time, in Beijing.  It was the first thing my mother noticed about China when she came to visit me. I love it, it is similar to putting the radio on scan and just waiting to see what random music will come on, only, all I am doing is walking down the street

2.  Transportation.  They just do it better here.  Trains? on time and cheap.  Planes? On time, and cheap. Buses. Horrible, crowded, but so cheap.  Bicycles with little motors? Scooters? Free and the best way to travel around the city.  I wish so much that I could go back to Beijing circa 1991, before Beijing had become gridlocked from all of the cars that no one here needs or can truly afford, but buy anyway. Also, fail all that? Cabs are fast and cheap, but come with the hassle of dealing with cabdrivers.

3. Huo Guo (hot pot).  What is that you ask?  Imagine that you are hungry, but too lazy to prepare anything.  So you make a spicy broth, and throw all of your favorite ingredients in it to eat.  Yes, I know it sounds like soup, but that is because I haven't gotten to the last part: you get to make your own sauce, and then take all of your veggies and meats out of the broth, dip it in the sauce and eat it.  It is, by far, the best winter food you could ever ask for.  Hot and broth-y to warm your chilled bones, spicy enough to open all of your pores and make your skin feel alive again.

(...to be continued)