It’s too late to complain about the heat. The weather cooled off fast here — it feels like an upstate New York autumn. That aside, this is the first installment of a new China Rog-ect feature on my impressions of China.
LIKE: the bicycle culture. The bike “paths” are more like bike roads, and e-bikes (the “e” stands for “electric”) are everywhere. Two-wheeled vehicles are not some barely tolerated form of transportation here. More than one year in China? I’d want one.
DISLIKE: the rising car culture. Having established something good from which we could really learn, environmentally speaking, China is pushing car sales as if it wants to become us. Not surprisingly, there’s more pollution, noise, road rage, etc.
LIKE: Chinese tea — 茶, or chá. (Sound familiar?) You don’t drop a bag in a mug and pour. Tea is appreciated more, like wine. In fact, the process reminds one of a wine-tasting. It takes time. Consequently, it relaxes you.
The varieties seem countless, each offering a different experience and advantage. A Chinese friend and I have a running joke about when we should drink “lose weight” tea and when we feel more like “good digestion” tea. To change up the taste a little, I like to add a couple of small, dried chrysanthemums, which give it, as you might imagine, a sweeter, flowery scent and taste.
You pass the small cup under your nose to first savor the scent, and you don’t gulp. Add a couple of tea cookies or cuiyu tea crunches (my favorite, like little bits of Heath bar crunch), and you’re good to go.
DISLIKE: the cost of Chinese tea. Only apartments and cars seem more expensive. At the shop I prefer, just outside the entrance to the Yangzhou Walmart, I was shown a box of a particular rose-flavored tea for 400 yuan, or $60. Add those tea cookies and crunches, and I’m a lot lighter on those 100s with Mao’s picture on them.
LIKE: prices in general. You can feed a family of eight for $20 U.S. at a good restaurant, or take the bus for one yuan — 15 cents. Maybe that illustrates why the U.S. government and companies are so ticked off about the exchange rate.
DISLIKE: the smells. You’re walking downtown when, suddenly, bam, you’re hit by something out of an alley that almost knocks you out. You get used to the less overpowering ones.
LIKE: the way the Chinese dress. They can wash a suit in a sink, and look great in it the next day. No gym shorts in public, no ragged T- shirts, no sweat pants in restaurants, no shirt-tails hanging out. It reminds me a little of my late, European-bred dad mowing the lawn in his suit.
Does this mean we’re the more advanced culture, that we’ve maturely moved beyond the point of caring how we look, that we value comfort and convenience over style? Or that we’re just slovenly? You tell me.
DISLIKE: the way I stand out. I’ve come to cringe at the word “hello,” which is used less as a greeting and more in a poke-the-American-animal way on campus. Several students approach. One automatically barks out, “Hal-lo! Nice meet you!” I say hello. Or, “nĭhăo.” Group runs off, giggling. Trust me. It gets old. (They see a Chinese teacher, not a word. Now I respond only if my name is used, or I recognize the students from class.)
LIKE: girlfriends holding hands or walking arm in arm as a sign of friendship. It’s nice.
DISLIKE: fireworks. The first few times they go off, OK, China, fireworks, I get it. After a while, though, you know that annoyance you feel July 4, when kids keep setting off fireworks long into the night after everything has ended and you’re tired and want to go to bed? It’s like that every night here.
LIKE: badminton. Really, it’s an exciting, beautiful sport when it’s not played as a backyard alternative to Jarts. And they’re good at it here.
DISLIKE: mosquitoes. How do so many get into the house, is what I want to know.
LIKE: little kindnesses. I’m playing pool in a campus hall filled with bad tables and cue sticks that used to be straight, like, before the Communists came to power. The best player in the place stops what he is doing — you know, shooting — and offers his stick, a really nice, hefty one, to a foreigner he has never met. This kind of thing is not unusual.
DISLIKE: mass rudeness. There is the disgusting type, like adult men loudly and publicly coughing up their phlegm, as mentioned in a previous post, and the meanness kind, like drivers ignoring pedestrians and store customers butting into line ahead of you. There’s a web page that goes into more detail, though I have not found the claims about states of undress to be true.
LIKE: the use of space. Whether it’s a small garden between parking spaces or a large public square (nothing more than a paved area) where people gather to sing, dance or otherwise entertain themselves, nothing seems wasted.
DISLIKE: the smog. If the e-bikers are wearing surgical masks, it’s a bad sign.
The China Rog-ect 