Shaking Hands with a Dead Fish

I read somewhere that the handshake actually came from the American-Indians and was their custom that has since integrated into business society.  The Chinese don’t like to shake hands.  If you offer a hand, you’ll get, what I refer to as, the “dead fish handshake”.  It’s just something that they don’t really understand, but will do if they think it’s important to you.  The safest thing to do is not to even offer, unless they stick out a hand to you, then clasp it between both hands and shake.  Their equivalent to the handshake is offering a business card, and that you should accept with both hands.  The two hands thing is something that I learned long ago in South Korea, when someone hands you a business card with two hands, or money with two hands, or a contract with two hands, he/she is signifying that he/she is behind it 100% and giving it with their whole heart.  The same thing with the handshake, if you’re going to do it with a Chinese person, at least do it correctly.

What seems odd to me about all of this, is that when you have good friends here, you will see two men walking down the street holding hands, or two women.  Note:  They are not gay, and in fact, I think China is actually one of the most homophobic places in the world.  I saw a poll on China Daily, the government run newspaper, where 80% of people polled said that they were against gay marriage, or even gay relationships.  Another 60% or so of people polled said that they wouldn’t even be friends with someone who is gay.)

Over this past new year, I had the chance to build a relationship with a family from North China.  They had 2 girls and a boy, who were an absolute blast.  The man, Lee Quin, runs a water business, of sorts, in Huinan (not sure on the spelling, not even really sure where it is, but I have been invited to come out when I learn Chinese, to spend some time with the family, the name means south of the river, but I can’t remember how to spell river…or maybe it’s lake, it got a little confusing in the explanation.)  I spent a week with this family, and with his sister, Janice, and soon to be brother-in-law, Bob, who is an American that was visiting Shenzhen.  I knew the family barely had the money to support itself, and so, Bob and I split the bill when we went out, we were eating Chinese, so it was always in the neighborhood of $20 USD, anyway, and wasn’t a big hardship on my part, but meant so much to the family that we wouldn’t even allow him to try to contribute, just bypassing that gesture completely, so as to avoid his loss of face.  The kids were so much fun, the oldest girl, spent a good hour or two teaching me to count in Mandarin, and trying to teach me Chinese characters.  The youngest, was my little buddy, and I have a ton of pictures of her, the boy was entertaining, but didn’t really warm up to me as their girls did.

When it came time for them to leave, I gave them some gifts, they wanted pencil cases, but I also got them some stuffed animals as well.  You would have been amazed at how much they appreciated it.  It was interesting when I was saying farewell to the family.  Lee Quin had a picture taken with me, a picture with his kids, and a tearful farewell, and genuine invitation to visit once I was able to communicate with them.  The town that they live in is a real town…I’m not sure that there’s even a hotel nearby, although I will be checking into that as I know that they don’t have the space to spare.  Lee Quin makes 4,000 RMB/month (about $660 USD), riding a bicycle with a flatbed on the back and delivering water bottles to people, and supports his wife and three children on that salary.  I was completely amazed to see how well they are doing on so little.  They are staying away from government assisted facilities, as they owe the government 100,000 RMB for the additional child that they had.  The other one was waived due to the fact that they had a boy, since they can’t afford to pay that fee, they have to make do with what they have.  I’d love to send pics, and I will, I just need to wait until next week to get an internet connection.  I have a translator from the school who will call and get it set up for me, I just don’t know when.

In Shenzhen, there is no such thing as an apartment with a heater in it.  As near as I can figure, when it is cold, you close the windows, shut the doors, and turn on the stove, to warm your place, at least that’s what I did.  It was only 2 nights.  Now, however, it’s starting to get hot.  I should have clued into the lack of heaters as a bad sign, but, I wasn’t quite that with it.  I was talking to another student about his first summer here.  He said that he learned to bring a change of clothes in his backpack for wherever he was going.  As soon as he left his apartment, and walked 10 feet, he was drenched in sweat.  My school is a 10 minute walk from my apartment, I hope that I don’t have to take the metro to reach it, but we’ll see.  Right now, it’s sort of hot out, I have no idea what the temperature is, I just know that my windows are all open, and I bought a fan today that I have cranked up, and now, I feel comfortable.  I do have air conditioners, but I also think that I need to acclimate to a certain degree.  I’ve tested them, they work, I’ll wait until this summer to turn them on full time…or at least until I can’t stand the fan anymore.

My neighbours just got a big Siberian Husky, pretty dog, but…  I can’t help but wonder if there’s a Korean family I can encourage to make a meal out of him.  He’s loud, and barks all the time, I’d much rather he fed a family of 10 or so.

I have a new phone number, it’s +86 136 3926 5252, feel free to call me whenever, if you’re smarter though, you’ll just let me know when to call you, and I can do so easily.  My new plan includes long distance at 6 cents/minute or so.  I finally figured it out, took me a bit.

I had the landlord come in to check my dvd player, I told him that it didn’t work, through the translator, and he wanted to verify that.  The picture is good, but there’s no sound.  He asked if I had any dvd’s, I told him no, but that there had been a dvd in it before I moved in, I had no idea what it was though.  To everyone’s horror, it was some sort of extreme Japanese porn.  It was mildly amusing how embarrassed every single person in the room was, myself included.  Next time, I’ll check a disk on my computer before playing it, making sure that I make it into a coaster next time, hopefully, there won’t be a next time. 

I have to say, I’m getting antsy to start school on next Monday.  At least it’s in less than a week.  I found out today that my teacher will be Mr. Wong.  He apparently has been teaching for many years, and lived in Australia for a while, I think that I’d like to see if he can speak Mandarin with an Aussie accent.  The one thing that I can’t seem to figure out right now, is how to tell someone’s mood by how they speak to each other.  People here yell at each other constantly, not necessarily because they’re mad, just seems like being emphatic sometimes.  I asked Bob the other day if he’s ever figured it out, and he said that he couldn’t figure it out either, he thinks you have to be able to understand the conversation before you figure out if someone’s pissed off, or just talking loudly.  I had always thought that the people who thought that Americans were big and loud were the Chinese, but, I don’t think that that’s right.  They are far louder, and ruder than American’s would think possible.