Massage Time

Our time in Huangshan (Yellow Mountain) was one of many firsts—for me, one of those was enjoying a professional Chinese massage.

Actually “enjoying” really only accurately describes part of the experience. At the time we were fresh off two full days of hiking around the mountain, so we decided that a foot massage sounded fantastic. I’m sure that more experienced massag-ees  would have loved it, but as for me, I was using one hundred percent of my energy trying not to laugh-- it was so ticklish! After awhile the nerves became a little less defensive of the outsider’s fingers, but for the first few minutes on each foot it was all I could do not to instinctively jerk it away.

I also learned that if your legs are sore then it’s probably not the best time for one of these things. Even though we ordered the foot massage, it turned out that pretty much included all of the legs as well. Sometimes it just felt like they were trying to punish us for some unknown wrong, incessantly slapping and punching our legs this way and that; I bet it wouldn’t have been that bad normally, but the muscles they were focusing on were already quite sore, so it was not exactly what we needed.

In spite of this though, most of the hour-long massage was actually quite nice. Plus, at a grand total of eight American dollars, it would have been tough to beat the price back home! 

Universal House Arrest

Yesterday in our Chinese biz/econ class we learned that the gap between the urban rich and the rural poor has been steadily increasing since the beginning of the Chinese growth miracle about thirty years ago. In fact, rural farming communities have more or less completely missed out on this whole development process that has brought so much prosperity to the cities.

Now this would make sense if there were way too many farmers growing way too much food—whenever there is an abundance of a good the price plummets, and with it the income of those who sell it (think oxygen). However this is not the case in China—according to our professor there is barely enough food to go around. This should mean there is about exactly the correct amount of farmers, and their salaries should be about the same as that of city-dwellers (if they were different some farmers would just move to the city, or vica-versa). 

So why is this not the case? Why do farmers on average earn less than a third as much per year as their urban peers? From what I gathered there are basically two reasons:

1. The government currently fixes the price of agricultural goods—so if you are growing rice, you are not allowed to sell it at the market price.  Consequently, you earn much less for each bag of rice than you would in a free market. This is why rural incomes are so low. So why do they stick around? Why don’t they just move to the city?

2. China currently has a fairly unique ID card system by the name of hukou. The purpose of this system is to keep people from moving away from their home area, and it is generally quite successful. Citizens are still free to move wherever they wish-- the hukou system just makes it very expensive. It’s kind of like in the US, how if you want to go to an out-of-state university it is much more expensive, so most people don’t. The difference in China is that many more benefits, like health care and social security, are dependent upon you staying put; what this practically means for the lower classes is that they cannot afford to move out of their area.

It seems like the solution is kind of a no-brainer: just lift the price controls and let people move about as they wish! My professor brought up two problems with this: for one, if the price controls were lifted there is a very good chance farmers would be undercut by subsidized foreign competition, so they wouldn’t benefit anyway. Secondly, if prices were lifted right away, inflation would soar, which would then cause a whole slew of problems.

It seems like the approach the government is using now is to very gradually get rid of the price-controls by raising them a bit every year, so this sector of the economy can be smoothly transitioned into the free market. In other words, they are applying the same policy they seem to be using across the economic and political board: slow, deliberative liberalization. 

We'll Have the Guinea Pig, Please

Warning: This post is quite graphic, true to the memory it records.

As we meandered down Yellow Mountain a few weeks ago, I received a text from Lucas informing me that we would be eating Guinea Pig that evening. The decision had already been made. While the thought immediately made me a bit queasy, I decided to stick with my resolve to try as many crazy exotic foods as I could while over here in China; I texted back: Let’s do it.

The restaurant we decided on later that evening was one of about four in the area where there were cages out in front containing cute, cuddly, very-alive brown guinea pigs. This is actually quite a common practice in China—not eating guinea pigs, but selecting a live animal, then having it delivered to your table on a plate about ten or fifteen minutes later; I guess the attractiveness of this is the food really could not be more fresh.

As soon as we even saw the cages, most of us started freaking out. Are we actually doing this?? Are we really going to deliver a death sentence to one of these furry little animals?? We were acting like complete pansies. We finally decided upon a nice, plump little guy, and then the one girl in our group had the nerve to name it, instantly personalizing the process and making us feel about ten times crueler. He was christened “Mao.”

We then indicated to the woman from the restaurant which one we wanted, and she immediately called over the executioner, a rough-looking guy smoking a cigarette, who was apparently just standing there on-call for this exact purpose. We thought they were going to just take Mao out of his cage and do the deed out back so we didn’t have to see it—how wrong we are.

As soon as he opened the cage, the guinea pigs started squealing and whistling like nothing else; they knew exactly what was going on. Our swearing and sounds of disbelief similarly increased in volume, and then it happened: the executioner gripped Mao, wound up, and slammed him into the ground.

 Crack!!

No more squealing.

We were absolutely freaking out; we had no idea it was going to happen like that. For goodness sake, were on a public walking street! There could have been tons of people nearby, including small children, and I don’t think it would have mattered. Then as soon as he did that, he brought Mao over to a small tub of boiling water and started skinning him before our eyes. It was like watching the wreckage from a recent car crash; it was terrible, but we couldn’t take our eyes away.

Eventually, they took what remained of Mao to the back to prepare him for us to eat. Fifteen or so minutes later, the lady emerged with a bowl of broth with chunks of meat and bone floating in it. The five of us (eventually) each snagged a bit with our chopsticks, counted to three, and then took a big bite. I hate to say it, but it actually wasn’t all that bad; similar to chicken but just a bit chewier. Anyways, taste aside this was easily the most shocking, albeit hilarious, experience over here to date; and you know what’s even worse? My friend Vince, as oblivious as the rest of us as to what was about to happen, accidently recorded the execution with his camera; so each time someone asks if they can watch it, we can hear the high-pitched whistling, and then suddenly can’t. Horrifying. All you can really say is T-I-C: This Is China.

We All Read in Characters

When I started learning Chinese, it was with a resignation that learning to read in this language would be much more difficult than learning to read in, say, Spanish, as the Chinese write in characters. Reading in Western languages seems relatively much easier, as they tend to be written phonetically.

I don’t think this is how we read in English though. Consider the following email-forward sensation:

Arocdnicg to rsceearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pcale. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit pobelrm. Tihs is buseace the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

In short, when reading English we don’t read words in the sense that we are sounding letters out as we process them. We just recognize the general shape of a word we had previously memorized; in other words, we read in characters. 


So really, the chasm between reading a phonetic language and reading in characters is not as wide as I initially thought. There still is the problem of coming across unfamiliar characters-- context will often provide the meaning, but characters often give no hints to their pronunciation (with modern technology this isn't as much of an issue, as you can just copy and paste it into an electronic dictionary, or draw it in on the trackpad) Aside from this though, when reading a passage that was written using characters that I have mostly already memorized, I reckon my brain is working in much the same way as when I am reading an English newspaper.

Inside the Hospital

When I asked my suitemate Omar if I could come with him to play soccer with a bunch of Chinese college students, I did not think that decision would result in me spending a couple hours in the hospital down the street, but due to what I think was a torn meniscus in his knee, that is what happened.

First off, I do want to say that I’m sure that most everyone working in the medical field here in Shanghai is very competent and very hard working. Despite the rustic-looking interior and less-than-safe feeling environment one is met with upon entering, I’m sure they do a fine job.

That being said, there were some pretty bizarre aspects to this hospital. First of all, if you want any help from the emergency room, you must pay up front. While this wasn’t a huge inconvenience from Omar (though he did have to hobble across the street to an ATM to pick up cash for an MRI scan), he told me that last time he was there for a checkup, an individual came in carrying one of his hands in a bag, having recently severed it from the rest of his arm; blood was spurting everyone, yet the ER refused to admit him until he paid the fee. Ridiculous.

Second, inside the room where we found the first doctor there was an individual smoking. Now I know China is more liberal about smoking inside in general, but we were in a hospital!! You just wanted to look at him and say, “Are you kidding me??”

Finally, whenever we were told to go to a different location in the building, they wouldn’t tell us how to get there, they would just point in the general direction. So naturally we came to an intersection of halls and we didn’t know which way to go. Turns out we didn’t have to worry though: soon enough, a lady came zooming up on here electric motorcycle-scooter-thing, the kind you see on the road here all the time, and we could ask her for directions. This was inside! In a hospital.

This is certainly another glaring piece of evidence that while China has been growing tremendously these past thirty years, they still have quite a long ways to go. 

A Networking Paradise

It was funny meeting the two high school youth leaders who crashed with Eric and I the first night we were at the youth retreat, before the rest of the kids came. One was from Singapore and one from Hong Kong, though they had lived most of their lives here in Shanghai. I just said hi and left the room soon after they arrived, but my buddy Eric hung out with them for a little awhile. When I came back, he was very excited—over the course of their conversation, he had learned that one of the guys would shortly be joining the Hong Kong national soccer team, and the other had recently scored a cool 2400 on his SAT.

Needless to say I was quite impressed as well, but not altogether surprised. I have to come to understand the Shanghai expat community is sort of a networking paradise; it seems like every other foreigner I meet has an unusually prestigious background. Within my bible study alone, I’ve recently met Oxford, Cambridge, Virginia Tech, and Princeton grads, as well as UC Berkley and Stanford students.  At church and at clubs I’ve had the opportunity to conversate with a few investment bankers and learn about the process of getting involved in the financial world here. When I mentioned this to the youth leader at our church over dinner, that there seemed to be a lot of smarties around here, she gave a very knowing nod. Generally, in order for Westerners to have been enticed enough to up and leave their lives back home and move to China, they must have been offered a pretty amazing opportunity; and usually those kinds of leadership roles are only given to smarties. Consequently, there is a noticeably disproportionate amount of intellectual elites in our church and within the expat community as a whole. Given this, it makes sense that their kids would be pretty talented as well. 

I guess this is another one of those things that I should have anticipated but didn't really. Either way, I know now there will many more opportunities to forge connections while over here, and I'm looking forward to seeking them out. And for my biz and econ friends ... come over! I think you'll like it ;)

Expat Youth Camp

The youth camp we helped out at weekend before last was both exhilarating and exhausting. I believe there were about three hundred expat youth there, from 6^th through 12^th grade. I was there as a counselor for a floor of junior high kids; they were a lot of fun, certainly as immature as preteen and early teenagers should be! A few them actually had a surprisingly mature understanding of the Christian faith though, reflected in some pretty good questions. Our small group times after the main sessions were mostly run by a healthy dose of ADD, but we had a few good discussions in there. It is really cool to see young adolescents be psyched about their faith. These conversations, as well as just noticing them singing out to God passionately during worship, especially considering which nation we were in, was awesome to experience.

While at the camp, we had one of the most powerful worship sessions I have had the chance to be a part of; I’m not sure why God lets us feel his presence in a way that is emotionally overwhelming only from time to time, but I do know that I absolutely love it when it happens. Looking around the auditorium was incredible; youth and staff alike were absolutely abandoned to praising God. Most were singing, some were kneeling, some were praying fervently, by themselves or with friends—the spiritual movement in the atmosphere of the room was palpable.

On a completely different note, the location of this retreat was pretty crazy; the purpose of the campus is to be a training facility for the bank ICBC (huge in Asia), and sort of has the feel of an adult summer camp. It has a restaurant-like dining hall, a good auditorium and large central building, a golf driving range, a bowling alley, tennis courts, and the rooms are all organized into luxurious three story villas, with about four rooms per floor. Each room had a personal living room and bathroom, as well as a balcony, and each floor had a common room and sometimes a small game room; my friend's villa even had it's own karaoke room on the top floor. Through all my experience going to these kinds of retreats, in my youth and on staff, I have come to expect that when I go to a camp, I am going to get dirty, and that’s that. This was quite different. It seemed like this would have to be way too expensive, but given the type of individuals that go this church, it would not surprise me if a high-up executive of ICBC was in the congregation and hooked us up.

Overall it was a great time; certainly another first to check off the bucket list ("Be a counselor at a Christian youth camp for an expat community in China"--it's a very specific list ;) ) and a great opportunity to get more involved with serving in our new church. 

Back from Avatar-Land

I feel like I keep writing something to this effect over and over again, but it is as true this time as it has been before: last week was one of the most fun I’ve had since arriving.

 Here is a quick summary: a few hours after our last class on Friday, my friends Eric, Colby, Vince, and I joined about forty other volunteers for an hour bus ride to a resort-like ICBC bank training facility, which our church and a few others in Shanghai had rented out to hold a youth retreat. We stayed there until early evening on Monday, headed back to our dorm for about a half hour to repack, then set off again for the train station. At a little past nine we rolled out, and the following morning at about nine we arrived at Yellow Mountain (Huangshan) train station; one bus trip and one gondola ride later we found ourselves on the famous, majestic Yellow Mountain, where we stayed pretty much until we returned to Shanghai. It seems like the trip was kind of a collection of experiences so I’ll just sort of write a series of fun/cool/memorable anecdotes. Here is the first!

Last Tuesday at around one in the afternoon, Vince, Colby, and I stepped out of a gondola and into the breathtaking world of Pandora. Ok it wasn’t actually the place where Avatar was filmed, but as we had been told, the scenery here bore a remarkable resemblance to the world created by Avatar director James Cameron. He is actually on record as saying this area, Yellow Mountain, inspired his design of the wilderness of Pandora; upon first site of the rugged, mist-bathed peaks it was easy to tell why.

This place was absolutely unreal. We had seen all kinds of pictures before arriving—and they are quite incredible—but experiencing it within the actual vibrant, majestic columns of rock with all the cool, fresh air and mountain smell was nothing short of ridiculous.

The second day we were there was probably the best; it started at about 4:00 in the morning, where we rose well before the sun to join hundreds and hundreds of our closest Chinese friends to watch the famed Yellow Mountain sunrise. It ended up happening behind some solid cloud cover, unfortunately, but it was still quite a fun experience; in the glow of the dawn, you could watch from our vantage point just a sea of Chinese tourists, all wielding cameras pointing in exactly the same direction. It reminded me of the beginning of a sports match or concert—there was sporadic cheering in response to eccentricities of certain crowd members, and you could feel the anticipation in the air. We also made a couple new friends, including a cool Chinese college kid who actually stuck with us the rest of the day (I’ll write more about him later).

Once it was evident we would not be seeing a magnificent sunrise that day, we made our way to the West Grand Canyon Sea of Clouds (or something like that), where we found some of the coolest, most wild scenery I’ve ever seen. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:

This place was absolutely incredible, and I certainly hope I have the opportunity to come back!

(By the way, conveniently enough my camera decided to break during this trip, so all of the photo credits go to the honorable, artsy Vincent Nahn)