I am NOT a Potato!!!!

I am not a Potato!!!

Sunday is shopping day! It's considered the perfect day to get all of the best deals, i don't know why, but it's a China thing...  Yup, that’s right, you can feel free to shoot me right now!  I went shopping with Mei, she purchased 5 dresses, 2 dressy jackets (you know the ones that you wear for style and don’t actually help with whatever the weather is doing?), 3 shirts, a purse, 15 pairs of earrings, and some other things for less than 500 kuai (about $68 USD).  The funniest one, I thought was when she was looking at a jacket to drive another seller crazy and bring the price down…she asked how much and the saleswoman said 200 kuai.  Mei said that the jacket was ugly, didn’t fit right, and she didn’t want it, but she’d take it for 50 kuai and only use it when doing household tasks…the saleslady was a bit offended but wouldn’t let her go, she finally got it for 50 kuai and was mad about the whole thing because she didn’t actually want it.  Apparently, she was serious in everything she told the saleslady.

Sunday is considered “Shopping Day” in Shenzhen.  Dongmen is a shopping area that is probably a mile or two long by a mile or two wide of nothing but shops, some of which are 6-8 floor high buildings full of little shops.  On a normal day, Dongmen is the busiest place in Shenzhen, and if you want to see a million people, that’s where you go.  On Sunday, however, it takes on a whole new flavor as 3-5 million people hit the area for deals.  It’s straight insanity, and quite a lot of fun!  I’ve tried to take pictures, but I can never really capture the image properly.  I think I’m going to take another American with me sometime, and we’ll climb up to a building roof to take a photo from there, if we can…I’m not sure that it’s legal or allowed, but we might as well give it a shot…worse case scenario, we get told no, or kicked out of the building.

China is very strange in some ways.  The censorship and the government run news and marketing campaign makes things interesting.  The magic numbers in the news are 6, 9, and I think 26.  If you see that 6 people were injured, it’s probably more like 50.  If you see 9, it could be anywhere from 25 to 100, if it’s 26, it’s probably well over 100.  There’s no way to ever be really sure unless you’re part of QQ (a social networking site with about a billion users, I have to join soon) or an article was done on chinasmack.com or ministryoftofu.com, otherwise, you’re in the dark.  When it comes down to it, you really don’t need to know, but, I remember reading an article about a giant sinkhole that formed in Guangzhou, and only 26 people were hurt or killed….but you can see hundreds of cars in the picture, so, I guess you can draw your own conclusions.

The marketing campaign is something else entirely.  I try to pay close attention to what advertisements are up on billboards in the metro station and other places, what billboards you see, things of that nature.  The most animated sign that is in my district, is advertising for an “International Gentleman’s Club”, it purports to be a restaurant and bar, it is not.  It is, in fact, a brothel.  You can tell by the website, but you can’t tell by the building that it’s in, nor from the sign itself.  On the website it advertises women for outcall, and women in a KTV (karaoke club) atmosphere, those of us who have been here for a while know what that means.  If you don’t know someone who goes to “massage” regularly, you live in a cave.  This place is trying to get the attention of people from Hong Kong, who all think of themselves as very international people, and not the “International Gentleman” that you would think mean Americans or Brits.  Generally speaking, those from HK who visit here are quit wealthy.  A dual license plate that allows you to drive in HK and Shenzhen is available on the black market for $1 million, they’re less expensive legally, but you will never get one.

I’ve noticed a string of advertising up lately that is targeted towards America’s version of capitalism.  I had a very intelligent professor who called the USA the “Hegemon”, and stated that the USA was on top of China because of the difference in management styles.  America has a horizontal management style, China has a vertical management style.  Essentially, it means that in north America, if you have an idea, you can take it up the ladder, present it and get the credit for the idea.  You don’t really get punished for innovation in the USA or Canada.  In China, if your idea makes it up a level, you can bet that your manager will be rewarded and you won’t get anything for it.  Now though, they are attempting to change that.  The signs in the major metro stations revolve around a theme, “Innovation encouraged, failure will be tolerated.”  I don’t think that they quite have the right message yet, but this is still a sign of change that is completely at odds with how things are done here.  In china, a massive failure at higher levels is still punishable by death.  You can destroy your family name by innovating beyond your station, if that makes any sense.

In America, some of the hardest working people you come across will be Chinese.  They work insane hours that most americans simply will not do.  They put their all into their business, or whatever it is that they do, and yet, they also tend to be extremely humble people.  This is what I expected in China.  While you do see it occasionally, it’s rare to see it on most levels.  Typically, only the educated show any pride in workmanship.  I suspect that in the farming communities it’s not like the mega-cities, but having yet to experience that, I can’t really say, I can only guess based on people I have talked to, who have families in those styles of communities.  Here, you’ll see a lot of people do things to the letter, but since they can’t see a way out or forward, they just do the bare minimum.

A good example of this is my Ayi.  To explain, an Ayi, or Auntie, is a cleaning lady.  You can hire her to do your cleaning however many times a week you want, she can cook, do chores, take dry cleaning, do shopping, whatever you’d like.  They are not dishonest, and you don’t need to worry about things going missing, that’s never a problem in china.  Before I got here, I read about how people would place their phone on the table, and it would disappear.  I don’t know anyone who has had that happen to them.  I do know numerous people who have left a phone and gone back 2 or 3 hours later to find it still where they left it, untouched.  My ayi works as a cleaner in a hotel, and my teacher suggested her as someone who needs a bit more money and would be happy to clean my place as well, as it is a chance to get ahead.  So, I thought that meant that she would work hard, need limited supervision, and instruction. 

The first time she cleaned for me, it was like nothing I’d ever seen.  I’ve always hated having someone look over my shoulder, so, I’d leave after making sure she was working for the first half hour, then leave for the remainder of her 2 hour shift.  Today is the fourth time she’s been at my place, after I’d left on the second and third visit, I couldn’t spot anything that she’d done.  I’m not altogether sure that she didn’t just sit on the couch and read a book, or watch tv, or surf the internet on my computer, hard to say.  I can say that the floors were swept but not washed.  The oven hood still had caked on grease, and nothing that I requested to be done had been done.  Friends that came over said that they were impressed on what an awful ayi I have, and that I should do something about it.  I couldn’t really go back to my teacher as it would be a loss of face for her, since it is her friend, and my teacher is actually fairly sheltered and naïve about many things that happen in china, as well as how life is.  I’ve noticed this by asking her questions, her answers are 10-20 years out of date.

I had a friend tell me what to do but I thought that her advice was a little harsh.  She said that part of life in china is yelling, getting angry, and making those under you feel small.  In this way, they know that you are the boss, and they know what is expected of them.  If you suck in your emotion, don’t get angry – visibly so, they will take advantage of you until you do.  I asked the same question of Mei, and she gave me the same answer.  I asked another woman, and got the same answer.  I asked a male friend and he looked at me puzzled for a bit…then said, “Oh crap….that explains so much!!!  I’ve been trying to figure out why women in China get so angry all of the time!”.  So, it’s not just me that’s clueless, but, it’s apparently something that I need to work on.  It turns out that my big error with my previous landlord is that my friend and I did not get upset.  If we had, that would have placed us over the landlord instead of putting ourselves on their level or lower, so they were able to push things further than they should have gone.  If I had gotten angry and started yelling, they would have backed down, and we would have been done in the first ten minutes of the situation.  I still have more of this to explore, and honestly, this is a personality trait that I have taught myself to avoid at all costs.  This also explains why the women here out-negotiate the men every single time.  I thought that Mandarin sounded like an angry language based on phone calls and how I heard women talking to each other, turns out that that’s just part of the culture, it’s not the language, they were actually angry.   I have to decide whether to pursue that and see how things go, or not.  I do know that it’s something that I will have to develop, as I have always learned from experience that cooler heads get ahead, and that usually the one who loses his head, loses the deal.  Here, it’s the opposite.

I think a lot of what goes on in south china is the old way of doing business.  I think that what I hear of north china is that they’re getting away from the old styles of doing things.  Getting angry, putting people to death, alcohol as a way of doing business, yelling at each other until someone has an anheurism, etc.  But, nobody can actually confirm this for me, I suspect that I’ll just have to learn and explore.  I really, really want to explore china, but I’m actually waiting and holding myself back until I can communicate a bit more easily, so, I’m concentrating on school for the next couple of months, before I will reward myself with a trip somewhere else to learn more of the culture and the differences between Shenzhen and the rest of China. 

The learning curve is seriously insane.  I was watching tv or something with Mei the other night, and the worst thing that could possibly happen, happened.  I fell asleep, and started talking in my sleep…..in Chinese!!!  She woke me up after laughing at me yelling, “Bu zhe diao!!!” and “I don’t understand you!!!!”  (the first phrase means I don’t know), so, looks like it’s invading my sleep now.  She thinks that it’s a good sign, I was also apparently saying numbers with the proper tones, so, she was happy that her lessons are sinking in.  Mei thinks that this means that my subconscious is absorbing things, I think it’s the first sign of a mental breakdown… I don’t know if I want her to be right or not!

I got my head shaved a couple of days ago.  Mei alternates between calling me a “Goose egg” (ya dan) and a “Potato” (to da), she laughs like a crazy little maniac when I yell, “I am not a Potato!!!!”   I actually know exactly what the phrase “maniacal glee” looks like on a tiny little Chinese woman.