Knowing the Culture vs. Living in China

I have written a bit about being scammed by a woman here, but the problem is that I based that knowledge on advice from others, those others actually have been involved with Chinese women, but don’t care enough to learn about their culture, and thus, their outlook is purely from an outsiders point of view.  I am trying to learn culture, and I learn more and more each day, but honestly?  There’s 5,000 years of history that has created what China is today.  You can start to see motivations behind things, but it’s always based in some sort of cultural event.  For example, when you are sitting at a table at a bar, tea house, coffee shop, etc. and the waiter comes to pour more <insert beverage of your choice> for you, but you’re in a conversation or otherwise engaged, in Guangdong, you can do one of four things:

1. 1.      Interrupt your own conversation or whatever is tying you up.
2. 2.      Ignore the waiter/waitress who just helped you.
3. 3.      Tap two the first two fingers of your right hand on the table
4. 4.      Tap the first two knuckles of your right hand on the table.

Number 3 means thank you very much.  Number four refers to a king who was traveling in secret.  He poured tea for one of his body guards, but his body guard was unable to acknowledge the honour, so he tapped his fingers as though his fingers were kneeling.  This is something that those outside of Guangdong who don’t live here don’t know about for the most part, but the Cantonese people will get a big smile, and be grateful for both the acknowledgement, and for learning enough about their culture that you know when to do such an action.

In China, the man in the relationship is king.  It’s common to see someone who has lost their family fortune to leave his family and head to Macau or Hong Kong.  When his wife has re-established herself, he can come back and claim 100% of the family assets and fortune that his wife rebuilt for the family.

I think I mentioned a while ago that a girl I was dating here, Mei, wanted to put her name on my lease, and I thought that that was a scam of some sort.  I told another American about it, and he mentioned that he’s heard of this scam a lot.  The problem is, he’s only getting part of the story, and not even that part of the story is right.  If anyone is being scammed here, it’s the girl who placed her name on a lease instead of or beside your name.  She is essentially giving you her family name to use.  So, let’s say, for example, I decided that it would be a fantastic idea to sell drugs out of my apartment in Shenzhen (drugs are highly illegal here, you will go to prison, you will probably never get out.), if her name was on the lease, she would take the entire rap for me, I wouldn’t be punished at all, whereas she would be put in jail at the least, probably sentenced to die in my place.  So, who do you think is being scammed?  It’s actually protection.  Additionally, a Chinese name on a lease offers a great deal of protection that isn’t available to an expat. 

I was talking to some Chinese friends that I have made about the whole thing, and they said that while they were happy to help me out when I got into trouble with the police here in Shenzhen, and they think that I’m a good guy, it would take years before they would even consider putting their family name on an official government document next to mine, it’s a pledge that they take very seriously.  They have all told me that Mei is a rare woman, loyal, beautiful, completely trusting of me, and would be a serious benefit for whatever business I decide to do in China, ESPECIALLY in the manufacturing business.  Additionally, her putongwa (mandarin) is identical to that spoken in Beijing, except that she speaks even more clearly, and if she got her HSK (license to teach Chinese), she would be one of the better teachers to have.  She is clearly educated by a top university professor.  My English speaking friends who are learning mandarin find her a pleasure to talk to as she speaks perfect mandarin.  She does speak Cantonese as well but doesn’t like it as much.

My American friend and I have a running theory right now, that if you meet an American/Canadian/whatever here who isn’t into the culture, they can’t be trusted.  We’re basing this on past history, and on observations about many foreigners that we’ve met here.  I suspect that there’s really something to this theory.  The funny thing is that with those of us who are exploring china, exploring the history and the culture, when we get together, we rarely talk about anything else.  The Chinese people we know are happy to tell us anything we want to know, and actually are excited to do so.  It’s actually making us quite popular in some ways.  In others though, it can be quite hazardous…which is why I’m about to have a home-made Hunan dinner which will probably give me the ability to literally breath fire.

I was hanging out with some Chinese and American friends a couple of nights ago, and they were talking about an American friend of theirs who just started learning Mandarin, not from a mandarin school though, from some other source.  He saw a girl he really wanted to talk to, and so he walked up and said, “Wo jiao <steve>, ni jiao shenme shi dian?”  (I don’t know his name, I’m calling him steve).  It should have been, “Wo jiao <steve>, ni jiao shenme mingzi?”.  They think it’s hilarious.  He essentially said, “My name is Steve, what is your name 10:00?”.  The girl didn’t know what to do with that, I’m not sure I would either.  She started freaking out trying to figure it out, then finally ran away from him. 

Name’s can be kinda funny in China.  Everyone seems to know that a Chinese name means something.  Mei can be translated into somewhere around 30 different things depending on context, as well as what character they use.  Mei is the same word used to say “America”, “Mei guo”.  But, the other part of Chinese, is that they use these individual characters to make up different words.  You need to know those words and the characters, and the pinyin to know what’s going on.  “Hao” for example, meaning “good”, is a character that is divided into woman (meaning mother in this case) and little boy (in this case meaning son), a woman who has a son is good, therefore, “Hao” is good.   If you place that character next to something else, it can take on an entirely different meaning.  The character tree, when placed next to the character piece or part, means cup, I guess it makes sense in some way, but you’d never figure that out on your own.  So, when you place Chinese names altogether, sometimes their meaning changes.  Mei’s father was born a farmer in Hunan province, in the same town that Chairman Mao is from.  Every boy in the village was given a name with Mao in it, and now his name actually means, “Open the door”, Mei Kai Mao.

I think that most people have asked what an average day is for me, I don’t find it overly exciting, nor interesting, so I never think to write about it. 

I attempt to get up around 7, it all depends on the day, and how late I was out or up the night before, sometimes, like this morning, it’s an 8:30 am day, which is hectic and problematic as I start class at 9 am.  Getting up early has it’s own issues as I usually meet with Mei, who is a sadistic little minx, and enjoys torturing me first thing in the morning.  So, it’s an hour or two of yoga and core exercises.  I suppose you can see why I prefer to sleep in.  I head to school at 9 am.  I get off around noon or so, and get an hour and a half to have lunch and afternoon tea.  School again where we sometimes practice calligraphy, or just work on pronunciation.  My goal is for me to be able to be on the phone and have the other person believe that I’m Chinese, by accent, grammar, and pronunciation.  It’s possible, just time consuming.

I live right next to Gangxia subway station on the Lubao line.  It takes me all of 5 minutes to get on the metro (subway), but it also takes me 10-12 minutes to just walk to my building for school, I tend to prefer walking as I believe it’s faster, and I also like the exercise.  I come home from school, and grab a bit to eat somewhere, sometimes the Sichuan restaurant downstairs, if I want to bring my tolerance for hot food up, or sometimes a local café.  I have had a few of the street vendor food, but, you kind of have to be careful there.  If they reuse the oil, you’re going to be regretting life for a while, and it’s a very common practice.  Usually I get home and I play with my calligraphy brush somedays, other days, it’s tv and studying, or I sit down and write.  I’m about to head out, it’s 9 pm to meet up with a couple of Canadians that I’ve met here, and with their work schedule, it’s hard to get together, so we do it when we can.  It makes for a long week, but some contacts you have to keep up.  I usually call a friend or family member at midnight here anyway, to hit a normal hour there, the time difference is a killer.  Saturday, I like to head down to the shopping districts and wander around, people watch, see what there is to see, etc.  Sundays are my sanity days, I head to a park, try to avoid climbing a mountain, but I’m rarely successful.  I don’t have a scale, but I would estimate that with all of the walking, exercise, and eating habits that I have here, I probably have lost 30 pounds or so.  Most mention my passport picture and how much fatter I looked then, so I suppose it’s a good thing.