No More Chicken Feet!!!
China is a very strange place, in a lot of ways. Buildings are built to be aesthetically
pleasing, with a lot less thought going into practicality. There is a giant theatre not too far from my
house. It contains an actual theatre for
the arts that is on the top level, 4 imax style 3D movie theatres, and, from
what I can see, about 4 levels of garden space.
It’s quite possibly the most wasted space I’ve ever seen in a building
that costs millions of dollars. Of course,
it’s built by the government and run by the government, and I highly doubt that
it’s profitable, it can’t be. However,
it is absolutely beautiful. The windows
are nearly impossible to clean (guys tie a rope to a chair, then wander down
from the top, swinging precariously while cleaning them. I haven’t seen anyone die yet, but I’ve only
seen it cleaned once so far), but the way that the rain cascades off of the
beautifully rounded sides is a true thing of beauty. The Ping-An bank building is currently being
constructed. There’s a competition
between Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Beijing to build the tallest building in the
world. A friend of mine knows the
architect for the bank building, and they don’t know how high they’re going to
build yet. They’ve reinforced everything
to support 200 storeys, and are pretty sure it’s going to be between 130 and
180, which is a considerable range not to know.
It’s all a big secret as are the other two buildings being built. I think that all that really matters are that
the 3 tallest buildings in the world will be in China.
In downtown Futian district, there are 2 beautiful gold
buildings. They were built 10 years ago,
and are in dispute between the contractor and the owner. The buildings are finished but vacant as the
insanity goes on and on, I’m not sure that the original argument still applies,
but, they’re about 70 stories of beautiful gold plated glass and sides, and
also completely vacant. There’s a
fountain in front that is immaculately kept, and on constantly, but, there’s a
fence around it all, and nobody can get in until the dispute is solved. Personally, I think they’ll be taken down to
be replaced before that happens.
Shenzhen was built about 30 years ago. Some of the buildings are out of date, so,
the government buys up the old buildings, the tenants find new places to live,
and rips those down, to put up beautiful new structures. There’s always construction going on here, it
never, ever, ever stops. There’s about
an 80 storey building being built 2 blocks from me, I’m hoping that they’re not
going to decide that it needs to go higher, it towers over everything as far as
the eye can see, and will be part of the mall, probably with office and
residential space at the top. Personally,
I don’t know why you’d want to live up there, it seems to me that the building
sway in the wind would be about 1 meter on windy days, and I think that could
be a little frightening. The Ping-An
Bank building is supposed to have a 2-5 meter sway when it’s finished,
(depending on how high it goes). All I care
about is being above the level of the rats and bug infestation, and being below
the point where the building sways in the wind.
I don’t care if it sways, just don’t let me be aware of it, and all
things are good.
It’s been a bit of an interesting week. I suspect that it’s more interesting because I’m
having trouble sleeping with the combination of the heat, the humidity, and the
air quality. I usually wake up around 6
am coughing, turn off the ac, then wake up at 7, and turn the ac back on. Sometimes I wonder if I will figure out a
better method to sleep until 8 or so. I rarely
get to sleep before midnight, it’s usually 2 am.
I find a world without time zones to be very strange as
well. At midnight, the moon is not
directly above me, but more at the point in the sky that would indicate about 9
or 10 am. The sun rises typically at
9. There are parts of china where the
sun rises at 6 pm, and goes down at 6 am.
I think it may make business more easy, and everyone just thinks that
this is how it is, the only ones who find it strange are those of us from other
places.
I was very interested in a particular woman that I know. We’ve been friends now for a bit over 2
months and she is the funniest, most entertaining, intelligent, and beautiful
woman that I’ve known in a long time. (My
father would take this time to ask me if that holds true in comparison with my
mother…I hate those questions). I haven’t
been able to get a straight answer on whether she’d like to date or not,
because she’s very shy, and it’s hard to approach her with those
questions. I finally asked her how her
family would feel about her dating a foreigner.
She gave the answer to a mutual friend of ours, probably out of embarrassment. Her family told her that she would embarrass the
entire family, and that they only want her to marry a Chinese man. She is forbidden to even date a
foreigner. I guess we will just be
friends, which is still okay with me, as I genuinely enjoy spending time with
her and hanging out.
A couple of days ago, I sat down with a kid who just moved
to Shenzhen, most recently from Thailand.
He’s a British expat, and “kid” is probably the wrong word to use, as he
is 32. At the same time, he’s the most naïve
person that I’ve met in China to date.
Sarah told me what our friend said in front of this guy, Christopher,
and after Sarah had gone home, he asked me what I was going to do with
Phoebe. I said that we would just be
friends and that’s it. The rest of the
conversation went as follows:
“So you must not really love her then!”
“What
are you talking about? We’ve known each
other for a couple of months, we’re very good friends, but that’s all we can
ever be.”
“If you loved her, you’d be with her, and make things okay!”
“So,
your solution is to date a girl outside of her parents’ wishes, causing them to
lose face in their small village, becoming outcasts and the laughing
stock. You think it would be far better
to have a girl disowned, just so that she could be with you? In addition to that, she’s the oldest, and is
thus in charge of making sure that her brother and her parents have money, so
she sends home the greater portion of her paycheck every month. So, if I’m in love, I should completely
destroy the lives of 4 people, but I would be happy. What kind of jerk do you think I am?”
My friend DJ caught part of this and snickered to himself as
he walked by, afterwards he came by and said that I was exactly right in how I was
handling things (he’s lived here for 14 years and knows how it works), and
wondered how someone who is 32, has traveled the world, could have such a naïve
outlook on things. Christopher has
decided that “Asians are Asians”, and since he knows so much about Thailand, it
will all be the same in China. I informed
him that that was probably not a good avenue to take as the Chinese are
completely different from the Koreans, and I doubt that the Chinese have much
in common with Thai people. He doesn’t
believe me, I just hope that when he learns his lesson that it’s not a painful
or destructive one.
When I was 12 or 13, my father got me my first job working
in his automotive shop. He said
something on my way to work for the first time that has really stuck with me
over the years. He mentioned that at
such a young age, I didn’t have a lot of life experiences that other’s had not
had, and that I should spend the greater part of my time listening to what the
mechanics said and learn from them. I can
tell you that that may not be a great idea with mechanics, but it has served me
very well over the years. I’ve spent my
last 5 months or so here listening to other people, asking questions, learning
about China from people who have been all over and have the same thirst for
knowledge that I have. I’ve noticed,
though, that many who come here for the first time like to talk about how
strenuous and crazy their past experiences have been, and how it has prepared
them for China unlike others. I’ve also
noticed that those expats here who are in it for the long haul, always kick
back, smile, nod, and enjoy the stories, but never comment on anything, since
they know that nothing that they add will be taken to heart. Oddly enough, listening to those who don’t
talk as much and asking them the right questions has led me to greater
knowledge of how China works for the foreigner than any other avenue has.
You actually can’t ask Chinese people for rules,
regulations, expectations, or ways to get around this country. You can ask for help booking tickets, or
whatever, but navigating the country from a foreigner standpoint is vastly
different. There’s always an alternative
way to do things when the language, written and spoken, is so foreign and alien
that your mind just can’t wrap around and decipher it without a whole lot of
study.
My friend, DJ, took me for Dim Sum this morning. (Dim Sum by the way, is not Cantonese nor
Mandarin, I think it’s actually a British phrase to describe what they think
they heard when they were told what the morning meal was called. I can’t for the life of me remember what it
is in Chinese, but saying “Dim Sum” gets you absolutely nowhere.) There are no pictures on the menu. There is no pinyin, there is no English (in
the good restaurants, it’s all Chinese, and you get a pencil.) So, you can really do one of three things:
- 1. Take someone with you who speaks Chinese
- 2. Take a picture of the menu from a time before when you had someone who spoke Chinese with you.
- 3. Take a waitress with you around to other tables, point at what you want, and name a quantity, visit as many tables as you like to get what you want on the table.
I hate chicken feet. I
now have 2 friends who love it. I think
that they’re clinically insane, I can’t stand them. I can deal with chicken cartilage, (it’s
crunchy and chickeny, and is probably good for your teeth…like a bone is good
for a dog’s teeth), I can deal with veggies and vegetable like things out of
the see that nobody knows the name for (how do they order them? I think they ask for something green with
salt, that lives underwater, who knows though?)
Chicken feet will always be a mystery for me.
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