Dirty Jokes and Carrot Sticks

October 10th, 2006 Chris

Second to last installment of a series on my trip to Shenyang. You can also read Part One and Part Two in the series.

So a Canadian guy says to a Chinese girl: “Is your refrigerator running?”

The Chinese girl responds: “I don’t have a refrigerator.”

And thus begins a day Will and I spent trying to explain Western humor, pick up lines and an aversion to moon cakes to our friend Windy. We explained the double meaning of “running” in the old refrigerator prank call. Windy thought about it for a minute, decided it was indeed amusing, and gave a slight chuckle.

Admittedly, most of the jokes are the kind told in middle school, when bad words are hilarious and puns are simplistic. But we figured we should start with the basics and work our way toward multi-layered political and cultural satire and other comedic elements found in any episode of the Simpsons.

Here’s a sampling:

A man quit his job as a psychiatrist to spend his days cleaning septic tanks. When asked why, he said: “I was tired of dealing with people’s shit.” (Actually a true anecdote from the Discovery Channel show “Dirty Jobs.”)

If I could rearrange the alphabet, I’d put U and I together.

You’re pants are like a mirror. I can see myself in them.

Fuck me if I’m wrong, but is your name Fred?

In some ways, it was a lot like telling dirty jokes in grade school, since Windy apparently has been pretty sheltered most of her life. I can’t fault her for it, since she’s working on a master’s degree as an interpreter, while I’m afloat in China trying to figure out my life. But at least I can derive entertainment from watching my friend giggle like an 11-year-old when someone says a swear word.

—

In the middle of all this, we stopped for hot pot. This was a local variant, not the usual spicy kind from Sichuan. We wanted fish, potatoes, carrots, mushrooms and tofu. The carrots were the problem.

I wouldn’t have thought of it, but I saw a neat slice of the orange veggie atop some greens on a shelf. It was staring me in the face, and since I was sort of trying to eat healthier today, I asked for carrots.

“They don’t have any,” Windy said, translating for us and the waitress. What about the one right there? I pointed it out.

That one, she said, is just a display “to make it look beautiful.”

I would have let it go there, but Will spotted a bowl of carrots two shelves down. A whole bowl, just waiting to be cooked in a boiling pot and eaten. He pointed them out to the waitress.

“Oh, those,” both she and Windy said. “Those are just to make the food colorful.”

Will and I looked at each other. “Can we make our food colorful?”

That did the trick. The carrots were delicious.
—

Who doesn’t like moon cakes?

I, for one, do not like moon cakes. Can’t stand them, actually. The ones I’ve had so far are dry, bitter, and filled with meat or dates or other things I wouldn’t dare put in a real dessert. Really, why does everyone here seem to love these things?

Moon cakes are an essential part of the mid-autumn festival, celebrating the full moon. (For a better explanation, check out Steve’s China Blog.) Everyone eats the little pastries and everyone stares at the moon. Personally, I’d be happy with some Oreos and a DVD.

So what did the college get me to celebrate National Day and the mid-autum festival? Moon cakes. Two boxes of them. So far, I haven’t been able to give them away. I have, however, though of other potential uses for moon cakes:

• If frozen, they’d be about the size of hockey pucks. People do skate here…

• Something to reward my students when they win the little games we play in class, or

• Something to hurl at them when they respond “Yes” to “How was your vacation?”

This is probably my last Shenyang post. Tomorrow I’ll post a bunch of photos, including a few without people in them!

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Are they INSANE?!?!

October 10th, 2006 Chris

A few months ago, I walked into my old editor’s office and handed him a letter of resignation, saying I was going to China to teach English and try to understand this part of the world. He was overjoyed.

“I can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear you’re not going to the Middle East,” he said, probably referring to my friend James, who is in now in Turkey. But as the UN, IAEA and every weapons inspector the United States has sent to Iraq will say, the only nukes in the Middle East (for now) are in the hands of our allies.

The same can’t be said over here. Yesterday, North Korea decided it was getting far too little attention and had to throw an atomic temper tantrum. They tested a nuclear bomb.

While I’d be following this closely from anywhere, I’m getting especially jittery because Liaoning Province (home of Dalian, and more importantly, me) shares a border with the DPRK. I was even planning a visit to Dandong, on the border with our crazy neighbor, in a few weeks. Now I really want to go, because I’m not sure how much longer North Korea will be there.

(By the way, I’m pretty sure I’m not actually in danger here in Dalian, so don’t send frantic emails.)

I have to wonder, though, now that North Korea officially has The Bomb, will anything actually change? The U.S. will threaten, but can’t commit troops because of Iraq and Afghanistan. China has already started to step quietly away from the DPRK.

And like the missiles launched on July 4th and probably most of what comes out of North Korea, this nuke test didn’t quite work the way it was supposed to.

At least there’s something to take comfort in.

(For a far more insightful analysis, check out the Granite Studio.)

The next Shenyang post is still in the pipe. Up next, we’re telling dirty jokes…

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We’ve got nature right where we want it…

October 9th, 2006 Chris

Second in a series about my recent trip to Shenyang. You can also read Part One below.

Horticulture is, by definition, unnatural. And yet, on our third day in Shenyang, we paid 50 RMB and took a packed and slow-moving train 20 km out to the Botanical Gardens where we were told we could, in fact, see “nature.”

But as I said, an International Horticulture Expo isn’t nature. It’s a zoo for plants. It’s nature put in its place. Nature doesn’t come in neatly manicured rows. Nature is abstract, haphazard, balanced. Most of all, nature is quiet.

The main road is a river of sightseers, noisy and pushy, hurried and obnoxious. Every few minutes a tram cuts through the crowd, honking non-stop and tearing along the sidewalk. After an hour of this, we turned down a side path and walked into a “forest” of young trees.

Almost immediately, Windy started moaning that we’d get lost. Will showed her where we were on the map. I pointed through the trees to where we could still see the road and the crowds. And if we really got lost, we could always just follow our noses. The smell of urine and methane led us straight to the toilets. Those things stank 30 feet in every direction.

Will and I decided early on that the real exhibit here isn’t the plants. It’s the people. We watched trams fly by, packed with tourists, very few looking happy to be there. At times, they barely moved faster than those on foot, until the driver saw a slight clearing, then he’d punch it. The honking never stopped. People bumped and bustled. They argued and pushed each other, all to get a few pictures of someone making a peace sign in front of a small clump of flowers.

The “International” part of the show comes from a few dozen “country gardens,” little enclaves meant to represent some country most Chinese will never see. But most of them were awful. Had any random kid been doing a report on foreign countries based on these gardens, here’s what he might have told his teacher:

The French have nicely arranged yards with lots of shrubs and flowers, but they don’t water any of them, so everything is brown and wilting. The Greeks don’t actually have plants in their gardens, or not many. Mostly they like concrete. Italians like fountains with naked people but don’t use plants either. The Dutch have lots of flowers and live in red and green windmills.

The Bridges

In the middle of all this pseudo-nature is what might be the park’s most entertaining feature: The Bridges. Basically, it’s a family-oriented water park set around a series of precarious crossings over a shallow green river. Some bridges are little more than two cables or a wobbly set of planks strung together. Some are nearly impossible to complete without getting soaked.

We watched three teens attempt one bridge where they had to swing on a rope from one platform to the next. The last jump was the longest, and for a half-hour each boy would swing out, fall short and either drag his legs in the water coming back to the platform or just drop in entirely. The water isn’t deep—about waist level on most people—so they could have just climbed out at any time. This was a pride thing, though, and to give up would mean losing face. Finally, they called a friend on shore, who caught the legs of each swinger and pulled him to safety.

We sent Windy across a plank bridge, which was unsteady but simple. As soon as she made it a few steps, Will began jumping on the other end to shake the bridge. She made it to the other shore and glared back at us, waiving her fist.

Another woman on the same bridge had a complete breakdown. She froze halfway, where the water barely crested the wood slats. She bent over, crying out in torment, while a friend tried to encourage her from behind. Another person came from the other side to lead her across.

I almost wanted someone to push her in, just so she’d realize the water wouldn’t kill her. It was, at most, a meter deep. We saw another girl, probably in her 20s, curl into a sobbing ball on the shore after falling in. She had to be carried out of the water by a friend who just walked in, got her, and walked out.

A Sardine Can Cleverly Disguised as Mass Transit

We took the train both ways. It’s supposed to be a short ride, about 20 minutes, costing 3 RMB each trip. For the outbound trip, we reached the gate 15 minutes before departure. A guard held us there for a moment, letting everyone cluster a bit in anticipation, about a dozen people primed like race horses waiting for the bell.

The gate opened, and we raced down the platform. Why are we running? And to where? I had no idea, so I walked and shouted ahead, “Save me a seat.” Stupid me. Sitting.

We packed into an alcove between the main compartment and the connecting tube to the adjoining car. At least 10 people crammed into a space not meant to hold anyone, maybe 12 feet by four feet. I leaned against a wall and tried to read. A man lit a cigarette, and Will (a smoker) told him to put it out. The man looked at us like we’d just asked that he kindly stop breathing.

The train left at 9:30 a.m. By 10 o’clock we were slowly cooking as the train inched along, stopping and starting, then stopping again. We reached the Expo Park at 10:30.

The return trip was shorter, but getting on that train was worthy of combat pay. I’m really surprised more people aren’t trampled to death getting on trains in China. There were probably a thousand people in line when we bought our tickets. If we stayed at the back, we’d never get on board. “Why don’t we just cut in line,” I said to Windy, half-joking. She walked to the front of the line. No one said anything.

A whistle blew, and we surged forward, pushed by the anonymous crowd behind, stepping into each gap ahead. If someone fell here, they’d never get up.

The stairs over the tracks slowed this cattle-drive a bit—maybe people better understood the danger of tripping here—but at the bottom we were pushed again. No train awaited us, just numbers painted near the tracks indicating roughly where each car would stop. People clustered around these numbers, not shoving now but still trying to work their way forward. It would have been easy to knock anyone near the front down onto the tracks.

We waited like that for 45 minutes. Will, Windy, Brenda and I had a spot near #12. Too boys (teens or college students, I can never tell) inched over the white line, toying with the guards patrolling the gap. We ate the rest of our snacks and whined about the boredom.

The train arrived at 5:45 p.m. Again, the waves of people rushed forward. There was no line, no order, just hundreds of people trying to squeeze through a meter-wide door all at the same time. I was pressed from all sides. People behind me pushed forward; those in front resisted. On both sides, people elbowed and shouldered their way forward. My rib cage felt compressed like I was underwater. I took a deep breath, thinking I could force an opening.

I inched forward, eying a red railing at the compartment door. I lunged. My fingers brushed the metal, then caught it on the second try. I pulled myself forward, out of this human quicksand that kept trying to suck me down.

My foot hit the first step. I lifted myself momentarily out of the chaos, though I was still being pushed. My arm blocked a woman’s way. Courtesy dictated that I let her through, but the crowd had drown my sense of politeness, making me feel vindictive. And I was afraid to let go of that bar.

Most of the seats were taken, but I found a middle-aged couple alone in a booth. I grabbed the remaining space and guarded it until Brenda, then Will and Windy made it on board.

The ride back took exactly 20 minutes.

More coming soon…

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Shenyang: Five days in the Gray City

October 7th, 2006 Chris

First of an occassional series about the trip to Shenyang

Everyone in China travels on National Day. Seriously, I’m pretty sure there were 1.3 billion people on the road, not heading anywhere in particular, just going somewhere, because, well, that’s what you do when you have a week off.

Not wanting to seem like strange foreigners with no handle on Chinese traditions, Will (the Canadian teacher here) and I booked a bus to Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning Province, where we had an invitation to stay with our friend Windy. We left Monday at 9:40 a.m., spent four hours on the bus watching Rat Race and cartoons in Chinese, and arrived around lunchtime.

There was nothing extraordinary about the trip: a smooth highway passing through farm land and fish hatcheries, skirting smaller cities along the way. I’ve made so many road trips in the past few years, from suburbs to high desert to Northern California shores, that I find the highway comforting. It’s more familiar than a city, which has culture and history and routines. The highway is just a comfortable intermediary, always in the present, and the same everywhere.

A friend warned us that traffic in Shenyang was something to reckon with—“crazy,” he called it—but our first glimpse of the city betrayed none of the chaos we’d see on the roads in the next few days. We saw only wide streets and traffic moving as it should. Cars stopped at red lights and drivers mostly stayed in their own lanes.

We stayed with Windy’s aunt and uncle. Their apartment is part of a cluster of gray high-rises, with their unit near the back of an empty and neglected courtyard. From the outside, the residential complex has the same look as the old Soviet prefab apartments I saw three years ago in East Berlin and Prague and Belgrade. It’s all gray, the color of communism on the ground floor.

We walked up a dozen concrete stairs, then opened a steel door into an immaculate, spacious and beautifully lit home. White tile floors and walls appointed with paintings and plants that added just enough color to the main room. There were three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen and an eating area. A large window in the main room brightened the entire apartment during the day, and a ring of lights complimented a central chandelier at night.

Windy’s aunt and uncle are retired, although they’re in their mid-forties. Her uncle had a stroke last year and walks with a cane; his legs wobble a bit when he walks and his vision is off, but his face still looks young. They offered us a bowl of little spherical pears when we arrived. “We always eat things that are round in mid-Autumn,” Windy told Will and me. We both asked why. “Because the moon is round,” she answered. Oh, duh.

Shenyang was the seat of government in Manchuria before the locals marched into Beijing to topple the Ming Dynasty in 1644, and in someways it resembles other past capitals. Downtown, Shenyang immediately reminded both Will and me of Beijing and Xi’an (actually the only other Chinese cities I’ve seen; Will has been in China four years and has seen much of the country). At its heart is the old imperial palace, almost a mini-forbidden city, surrounded by food and souvenir vendors. There are two main streets, both called Zhong Jie (Center Road), one on each side of the palace. One highlighted Shenyang’s Manchu history, the other had two McDonald’s, two Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets and a Starbucks and is lined with retail boutiques.

We strolled through the palace grounds, being tourists and taking lots of pictures. We passed two boys, probably no older than 11, playing with a wooden sword and ax. Will overheard their conversation:

First kid: “Look, foreigners.”

Second kid: “You shouldn’t talk like that. We should pay attention to foreign culture.”

Will: “Why can’t my students speak like that?”

Hao chi ma?

Staying with a Chinese family means two things by default: You get to eat a home-cooked meal with the entire clan and drink your fill; and you have to eat a home-cooked meal with the entire clan who don’t believe you’re full and want to see just what it means to drink your fill.

We breakfasted each morning with Windy’s aunt and uncle. Her aunt took goodhearted stabs at what Americans and Canadians eat in the morning, setting out hard-boiled eggs, bowls of warm milk, loaves of bread, fatty sausage, cakes, brown bananas, pancakes, and one offer of moon cakes.

On our second night, we ate with Windy’s father and grandmother. Ten dishes were laid on the table: fish, pork, chicken wings, preserved eggs, garlic shoots with pork, cucumber salad, pork soup, wood ears, pork with mushrooms, shrimp. “Eat everything,” the matriarch said.

That gorging preceded a similar food fest at a local restaurant with Windy’s mother (her parents are divorced) the next evening. Every time we sat down, it seemed, someone was trying to fatten us up. I’m pretty sure I made up a bit of the weight I’ve lost from all this walking since I came to China.

One of my students told me last week that Chinese food is the “healthiest food in the world.” There’s no way that’s true. Most of what we ate was fried or loaded with fat (often both), and we ate tons of it. We ate until it hurt to hold chopsticks.

‘Give me Dalian any day’

We stayed until Friday morning, taking the same bus back and getting into Dalian just in time for another huge meal with friends. Few things make you appreciate a place like leaving it, and Dalian was literally a breath of fresh air. That ocean breeze and perfect autumn temperature was a welcome relief to Shenyang’s smog and bustle.

Shenyang is an interesting place, but not somewhere I’d like to spend more than a few days. The city was dense, crowded, busy and congested. Smog and haze dulled the otherwise colorful monuments and street architecture.

The people seemed indifferent to visitors, except those trying to sell us something. Then it was back to “hello, ten yuan, hello, hello.” On buses, we were shoved backward and sideways when someone needed to get through, and few people anywhere in the city looked happy.

Maybe this was just part of the holiday rush. Maybe it’s like this everyday in the Gray City. But I think Will said it best.

“Give me Dalian any day.”

Coming soon: ‘We’ve got nature right where we want it.’

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