Ranting Continued...

Okay, it’s been a while since I’ve updated this thing, so I should get to it. On this week’s exciting episode, I’ll be continuing my holiday rant. The celebrations just ended here in China, so I can still technically call it a holiday rant.

Complaint the Second

In my last entry, I believe I started listing my main complaints about China so far. The next thing on my list was cutting in line. Now, in person, Chinese people are some of the warmest, kindest, most hospitable people you will ever meet. I can’t say enough good things about interacting with them on a personal level. However, once you get out on the street or into any sort of impersonal situation, you become one of the billions of other people in China, and they can care for you as much as they care for the next pebble on the street. I guess I can understand the mindset that takes over when you’re jockeying for position in a crowd of thousands to try to get train tickets or to get to an aisle in a supermarket (shopping here definitely deserves its own entry). Most of the pedestrians here would just as soon walk over you as walk around you on the street, including me. In that respect, the city reminds me of New York. However, the one major cultural difference is that Chinese people have little to no regard for lines. If they walk into a fast-food restaurant or a convenience store and see a line, the first thing they do is walk to the counter in front of everyone and try to order or hand the cashier money for their purchase. I can’t tell you how infuriating this is the first few times it happens to you. It’s even worse for foreigners because we don’t have the same grasp of the language that the Chinese do and so it’s difficult for us to do what they do. We also have a respect for lines that’s been stamped on us by years of cultural training in the West.

Chinese people have no such stamp. In fact, you get so much practice ignoring the presence of other people/drivers while getting around here that it’s easy for you to pretend that there is no line when you walk into a restaurant or convenience store. You simply do what you want to do as if they weren’t there. Perhaps if you don’t acknowledge that there is anyone there, no one loses face or something. This might be the key to that phrase from the blog I linked to way back at the beginning of this adventure that described the traffic in Beijing. The author mentioned an old guy with a face like marble who was pedaling his way through the entire mess as if nothing else was there. This is exactly what people do here. They just set their faces and do what they please, oblivious to everything else going on around them. Of course, there’s something to be said for this philosophy, particularly when you’re competing with about 5 million other people in and around the city to get what you want. Sometimes it makes me think that this is some sort of a Hobbesian society, where it’s essentially every man against every other man. And while it’s true that most people here cannot be compared to the life Hobbes envisioned for those living in a state of nature, there are a select few that could be described as, “nasty, brutish, and short.” But it’s not even these few who cut in line. It’s everyone. And it still makes me really angry. I feel like I should also point out that manners regarding lines still exist in plenty of other highly populated countries.

Anyway, we may have a disadvantage when it comes to the language here, but the advantage we usually have as foreigners here is that we’re bigger than everyone. If you carefully maneuver yourself so that you cover most of the possible entry points to the counter, you can usually achieve success. This often involves a blockade consisting of you and two or three other friends. Most of us, including me, have also reached the point where we are perfectly willing to deploy elbows to maintain the integrity of the blockade. Since the amount of time you find yourself waiting for the food is already frustratingly long, any method you can use to speed up the overall process seems to be completely justified. The worst is when old people come and literally push their way past everyone. There’s absolutely nothing you can do to prevent it. Older people are revered here, so you can only look on helplessly as they shove their way to their chosen destination. Unless they’re beggars. If they’re beggars, young or old, normal Chinese people will be quite aggressive in driving them away. I suppose I still haven’t fully figured out how the age system interacts with the class system here. I’ll learn eventually. Anyway, back to cutting in line. The only major incident that I can think of that’s resulted from cutting in line or an act related to it was when a woman took the menu out of my hand while I was ordering. Now, I consider this to be one step below taking the food itself out of my hand. And those of you who know me well know better than to try to take food from me. So I snatched it right back, mentally noted the surprised look on her face, and went back to ordering as if she hadn’t done anything in the first place. I have to say, I felt pretty satisfied afterward. Who knows? Maybe there’s something to this philosophy of doing whatever you want after all…

Complaint the Third

My final complaint (for the moment) involves the use of cell phones here in China. The most annoying habit that people here have is one that used plague America. It appears that just as America has grown out of it, we have passed it on to the Chinese. This is the practice of speaking into your phone as if you need to shout to make yourself heard, regardless of the presence of any background noise or interference on the phone. People here tend to answer their phones as if they’re bellowing at a friend standing across a large river or chasm of some sort, particularly if they happen to be in an enclosed space such as an elevator or something. If I had a better grasp of the language, I would start assuring cell-phone shouters that the person on the other end will hear them, even if they reduce their decibel level below that of a jet taking off. I’m not sure it would have any effect, though. For some reason beyond my understanding, Chinese people seem to insist that every function involved with the use of their phone is at full volume. I’ve only been witness to one instance in which someone’s cell phone wasn’t ringing at the loudest setting possible. One. That’s it. My roommate and I, both immediately aware of the magnitude of such an occasion, ultimately concluded that the volume button on the phone must have been catastrophically damaged. There’s no other way that phone was going off quietly.

The last aspect of this noise complaint involves those people who let their phones ring interminably because they just like to listen to the music on the ring tone. I’m aware that American people do this too, but this in no way makes it any less reprehensible. As the beats of some Chinese pop song vibrate every object within five feet of the phone, I often find myself thinking, “You have approximately three seconds before I send that cell phone ricocheting off your cranium at high velocity.” This is another one of those things that annoyed me in America and seems to have made it’s way over here as well.

And while I’m on my soapbox, I’d also like to make some scathing comments about the situation involving my wallet. Now I will freely admit that I lost my wallet while I was on vacation in a city in southern China purely because I’m an idiot and for no other reason. I got warm while walking around and decided to take the jacket off and sling it over my arm. It somehow didn’t occur to me that gravity would come into play at some point in this situation and my wallet would fall straight out of the pocket into which I had placed it earlier. Well, it did and I lost it. I canceled my card and mourned the loss of about 300 RMB (approximately $40). I figured it could have been much worse. However, a couple of days ago, one of the women who works for English First told me that someone had found the wallet in Xiamen, found a business card belonging to my boss, and phoned the company. I thought this was great. The woman who works for EF talked to the woman and had to act as a kind of relay for a little because the day I received the news about the wallet is my busiest day of the week. So I gave the CC (EF employee) the answers to a couple of logical questions, such as how much money was in the wallet and what kind of card was in the wallet. I went on about my business, thinking I might actually get the wallet back soon. Then the CC came back with more questions. What was the color of the card? What was the bank on the card? Again, how much money was in the wallet? What color was the wallet? Slightly puzzled, I answered these questions as well and went back to teaching my class. Then when the day was finished, the CC told me that the woman wanted to talk to me in person. After being assured that the woman who found it spoke English, I called the number. No one picked up for a couple times, then finally a Chinese woman answered, listened to me speak English for a few seconds, started shouting at me in Chinese, and hung up the phone.

Now I have no idea what this woman is thinking. Is she doubting that this is my wallet? I lost the wallet in Xiamen and I work for EF. She found an EF business card in it with my boss’ name on it in Xiamen. I’m the only EF employee who was both in Xiamen for the holiday and who lost a wallet. I’ve accurately described the wallet and the card. Now it’s possible that someone else took the money that was in there, but you’d think all the things I listed above would pretty much confirm that this is my wallet. We’re not investigating the Kennedy assassination here for crying out loud. The evidence seems pretty cut-and-dried. What else could she possibly need to talk to me for? Why does this have to be such a hassle? Why can’t she just send the wallet to EF and be done with it? And now, she won’t pick up the phone when I call. Why all the effort to track me down and make sure that she talks to me and only me if she won’t answer when I try to call? WHAT IS GOING HERE? Just like Will Ferrell in Zoolander, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. I swear, sometimes I just don’t understand people.


Next Time, On Batman

Will Batman escape from the clutches of the Joker? Will he be able to save Gotham from this week’s dastardly plot? And most importantly, will I manage to calm down and be less crabby in my next entry? These and other important questions will be answered on our next episode. I’ll write an update about how things are going with the teaching. I’ve recently gotten a class of 3-6 year olds, so things have been… interesting. Remember, same bat time, same bat channel.