(This is the first in an as yet unnamed monthly series that tries to introduce foreigners to Tianjin’s “regular Zhou’s” – the 老百姓 (“old hundred-names”; common folk) who form the beating heart of Tianjin. Mr. Cháng, the sidewalk barber, is next. The interviews are severely hindered by my lack of Mandarin and it shows, but it’s still a fun project. This blog version contains some extra details that wouldn’t fit the space requirements in the magazine. Other adventures with Mr. Lù and the old boys club are listed at the end of this article. Mouseover the Chinese characters to see the pronunciation.)

A Modern-day Living Lei Feng
His friends call him a “modern-day living Léi Fēng” (新时代的活雷锋), after the orphaned Mao-era peasant soldier famous for his unselfishness toward fellow comrades and selfless devotion to the Communist cause. The “Léi Fēng spirit” (雷锋精神) lives on today in elementary school textbooks, songs, an online video game, advertisements, and popular imagination as a way to describe people who go out of their way to help others. It also lives on in people like Mr. Lù, our neighbourhood’s bike repairman. The way he and his friends have treated my wife, myself, and even my second-hand, high-maintenance, fake Flying Pigeon bicycle make it obvious why his friends give him this title. This “modern day living Léi Fēng” extends a generous helping hand to locals and foreigners alike, and he has a good deal of fun doing it.

Mr. Lù fixes bikes on the corner near our neighbourhood’s front gate every day from 7am to 5pm (8pm in the summer). But from my perspective as the one of only three foreigners in the community, we should include Welcoming Committee and Host in his job description. I don’t know if giving foreigners a warm welcome and helping them feel at home in China is a big part of the “real” Léi Fēng’s official legacy or not, but it’s certainly a part of Mr. Lù’s. It’s people like Mr. Lù and his friends that make living in a Chinese neighborhood so much more enjoyable for the new foreigners.

My wife and I first moved into this community in April 2007. We were fresh off the boat with a grand total of six weeks of Chinese class under our belts, meaning we could point and mumble in the vegetable market and usually get what we wanted if we’d reviewed the vocabulary beforehand. Aside from that rather necessary survival skill, we couldn’t communicate much of anything. But that didn’t stop Mr. Lù and his friends from inviting us over to sit and chat when they were having lunch outside or from being generous with their food and bái jiǔ (白酒 – the infamous Chinese alcoholic drink akin to “white lightning”). Not daunted by the language barrier, Mr. Lù used food, snacks, drinks, rounds of Chinese chess, and a lot of friendly banter to make it clear that we were welcome to stop by for more than just getting tires patched and brake pads replaced.

Some days he’s drowning in bicycles, and it looks like the repair jobs people have dropped off are laying siege to his mobile tool shed. He’ll fix more than thirty bikes on busy days, but after twelve years of repairing bicycles he’s not intimidated by the heavier work load. He enjoys the extra work and the extra pay that comes with it.

When he’s not too busy he can fit in an after-lunch nap, go fishing on the canal, or chat it up with whoever’s around. Sometimes there can be small crowd; his repair corner can be a social hot spot, and he’s not too stiff to have some good-natured laughs at the foreigner’s expense. Neighbours occasionally choose his corner for a game of Chinese chess, which usually draws more participants than just the required two. As the eighth of nine children and the fifth brother (he has three sisters), I imagine he learned early on how to handle a crowd.

When I first learned of his family’s size, I was shocked. Nine children? But it was the same for his friends. Decades ago Mao had said, “More people, greater strength” (人多力量大), and people were encouraged to have large families and make more workers for the development of the economy. This policy was short-lived, but for Mr. Lù’s generation – people who today are old enough to be grandparents – families of this size are not uncommon. Mr. Lù and his wife have a daughter in her mid-twenties who works for an oil company.

Despite his warm and easy-going manner, Mr. Lù doesn’t necessarily have it easy. He makes 1500 to 2000元 (yuán) per month (about $200-$275), and rent for him and his wife is only a little over 80元 per month ($11) because the apartment is provided through his work unit (单位). However, he no longer has the security he once enjoyed when working for his government work unit at a state-owned textile factory. Like many Mainlanders of his generation, the “iron rice bowl” (铁饭碗) has cracked; the state-owned enterprises that haven’t been closed or sold can no longer provide jobs for everyone. People like Mr. Lù, while still retaining some benefits from the old days like a cheaper apartment, have to fend for themselves financially. He misses the time when he didn’t have to worry about the basics of life, and when it was easier to find work.

When he was younger jobs were easier to come by. He’s worked for several different companies over the years, including a furniture factory and the Tianjin Daily newspaper offices. But he’s older now, and potential employers are less interested. He worries about retirement, which usually happens at 60, and how he’ll manage. More people are riding buses and taxis than in the past, and car ownership is on the rise. No one feels the gradual decline in bicycle use more keenly than bike repairmen like Mr. Lù. He jokes about how hard it is to find a bathroom when working outside, but the gradual decrease in work is his biggest work related difficulty. He wishes that the government could somehow help him improve his life, but he doesn’t receive any work or money from the state.

These worries don’t hinder his generosity. He charges little for his work, and sometimes even refuses to take money, to the point of pulling it out of the money jar and stuffing it directly back into people’s pockets. I’ve not only witnessed him do this to others, but personally experienced it myself.

Mr. Lù hasn’t had a lot of contact with foreigners, but aside from a decidedly unfavourable impression of South Koreans, he says we’re alright, and hopes that we will learn Mandarin well and bring Chinese culture and history back to our home countries.

Additional info on the “real” Lei Feng:

• Lei Feng – three pages outlining the evolution of Lei Feng in Chinese culture, illustrated with propaganda posters (this is cool!)
• Happy Learn From Lei Feng Day! (March’s propaganda)

P.S. – I just now delivered a copy of the magazine and some photos to Mr. Lù, and they seemed to really get a kick out of it. He didn’t seem to mind that the editors used the wrong lù character for his name in the translation (he’s 路, not 陆).

I exited the school gate around 10:30 this morning and found traffic all jammed up and people crowding along both sides of the canal that runs in front of our apartment. There were police, two workmen in a small boat, and part of the area was roped off. They were just beginning to fish a body out of the still-frozen canal. The ice is thinner now, so I guess it’s easier to see what’s under there. I didn’t stick around, but I noticed that there weren’t any holes in the ice nearby, so I imagined the person must have gone in a while ago and only been discovered now because the ice has thinned enough. We also noticed two days ago that the ice was suddenly completely clear of ice fisherman, but I don’t know if that has any connection or not.

After getting back from a trip to the bike market (helping some new students buy bikes), I asked some of the neighbours about it. Mr. Huì, the restaurant kitten thieving retired guy, told me it was a middle aged man and the body had been in there for about two months. He didn’t know if it was suicide or not. I didn’t take pictures, except for this one from far away when I was on my way to the office later in the day. There are some bars right by that area of the canal and it’s not uncommon to see the occasional drunk person wandering around if we’re biking home late at night. Last year around this time rumours went through the school that a woman had committed suicide the night before by jumping into the canal.

Aside from that, we had a fun day. We have some different teachers this semester and I think they’re going to be great, and today we did a little introduction to local street food and bike riding for the new students.

The photo shown is of the last hurrah for this winter’s ice fisherman, taken on a cold Monday morning around 7:45am.

Pronounced:
kàn rè nao/còu rè nao
Literally:
watch (or join in) hot noise
Means:
“watch the excitement,” or “join in the excitement.” A good party, wedding banquet, night market, celebration, etc. is rè nao – lively and bustling. Chinese New Year’s Eve is super rè nao with all the fireworks and everyone outside having a blast. “Watch rè nao” also applies to the crowds that gather to observe an accident scene or a quarrel in the road.

In case you’re wondering, we’re back in regular classes starting Monday morning at 8am. This week new associates for the NGO arrived, so Jessica helped get their apartments ready, and on Thursday I’m doing the traffic/bike riding orientation and the trip to the bike market (for those brave enough to purchase a bike after their official introduction to Tianjin’s traffic scene!). Newly arrived folks really don’t seem to like it when we tell them you’re supposed to stay laying in the road if you get hit by a car and wait for the police. Hey, we don’t make the rules!

By the way, if you haven’t noticed yet, please check out the new-and-improved photo galleries! You can scroll through now, like a slideshow. (It “should” work on whatever browser, but if you’re having problems, try using Firefox, or just click here.)

And here’s your February dose of propaganda…

Public service commercials in any nation are perfect joke fodder, and this public service commercial from Shanghai is currently attracting scorn from the foreigner blogosphere, as can be seen in the comments on Sinosplice. It’s 6 minutes of Mainlanders not being unapologetically inconsiderate to one another in public (which we’re all in support of, by the way):

The little girl at the end says: “和谐城市心灵乐章” (hé xié chéng shì xīn líng yuè zhāng), which means something like, “Harmonious city, spiritual symphony” (?). “Harmonious” is a current official theme word/excuse/legitimizing concept for China’s ongoing social control measures.

Right at the beginning, when the foreigner couple poses for a photo, you can get a taste of the pollution haze in the background behind them.

After a train ride to Beijing, a night in a hostel, a bus ride, and then a car ride, we arrived at what people say is perhaps the best preserved, least Disneyfied portion of the Great Wall. Some English teacher friends wanted one last fling before the regular semester starts so we tagged along.

See more photos here!

Hiking the parts of the Great Wall that haven’t been recently restored is great, and not just because it’s the Great Wall and the scenery is fantastic and you’re alone most of the time and it’s quiet (blessed, blessed silence!) and the air is clean(er) and you get good exercise. There’s an element of mild peril to all these steep, crumbing staircases and watchtowers. It’d be so easy to fall and bust something as you climb up and down steep, slippery, debris-strewn slopes or uneven, narrow stairs, never mind having something bust and fall on you in the cracked and disintegrating towers. They’d never let you play on this kind of stuff in North America; it’d have paved, even steps and guard rails and bracing everywhere. But this is China; the courts protect The Man from the people, not the other way around. When you’re hiking the Great Wall, that’s both a good and a bad thing, as we found out yesterday.

We hiked from 11am to 4:30pm – it was exhausting because it’s all up and down and when there are steps, they’re tall and uneven. But the view, the clean(er) air, the exercise, and quietness – oh, the quietness! – made it so worth it.

Sadly, when you look our across the hills and mountains you can’t avoid seeing the pollution haze on the horizon, and the scattered patches of recently planted pine trees on the otherwise treeless slopes highlight the history of environmental abuse. Still, it beats Tianjin, and it sure beats the even noisier and dirtier Beijing (I am so glad we chose to study in Tianjin instead of Beijing – yuck).

Takin’ it from The Man
The no-so-cool part of the trip is where they forced us to pay almost the whole entrance fee again and then pay to cross a bridge, just so we could get off the wall to the parking lot where our car was waiting. We’d sort assumed that the fee to enter the park included the ability to exit the park, but it didn’t. Halfway along the hike they post signs declaring it a different “scenic area” – not that you could get off the wall at that point even if you wanted to. Then before you reach the end there are two guys with official-looking badges and tickets blocking the path along the Wall. They tell you if you don’t want to pay, that’s fine, you can just go back the way you came (4+ hours of hiking!). It was like finding out at the end of a meal that there’s another fee for eating more than the half the food. It’s really sort of a token “China experience”; no one has sympathy for this kind of story because almost everyone has experienced far worse. Not to be cynical, but when little things like this happen and you’ve been reading your Chinese history and current events, you get the impression that getting taken advantage of by those above you is just as much a part of experiencing China as hiking the Great Wall. Thankfully, we only experience it in little ways like this.

But to end on a happy note, we met a famous celebrity from Taiwan (and his film crew) on the Wall! Jackie Wu (吳宗憲 – it was the first time we’d ever heard of him, but he and everyone else assured us he’s very famous) was there filming a game show/reality show called “Big Spender” and they had horses and crazy costumes and stuff. The producer was a European guy and he explained it all to us, saying that “reality” TV doesn’t really work in China because people won’t fight on camera, so it’s more of a game show where teams in different cities get tons of money to spend and whoever spends it most wisely on the best quality stuff gets to keep everything they bought.

Make sure you check out the photos! We took lots, and there are some fun ones.

Okay…so this one’s not in the promised “Beauty” series…but is a short anecdote regarding recent experiences with beauty products. Tianjin’s winter weather is the kind that makes your skin feel extremely dry, to the point of cracking and peeling. So, around Christmas time, I was overjoyed to find some wonderful Olay brand lotion that did a great job helping me feel more human and less lizard-like. Fast-forward two weeks…in the middle of my month long bout with bronchitis and a bad cold, I suddenly develop bright red splotches behind both knees and in my elbows. These spots were itchy, hot to the touch, and extremely uncomfortable. Fearing that I was having an allergic reaction to the antibiotics I had started to take, I asked a nurse friend to take a look at the red spots. She felt like it was a topical kind of reaction, and together we decided that I either might be allergic to my new lotion, or maybe my body was just overwhelmed with having been sick for too long and more sensitive to the new lotion than normal. Her advice? Stop using the lotion.

So I stopped using it, and (after several layers of skin had peeled off) the area behind my knees and elbows slowly returned to normal. One month later, being fully recovered from my illness and once again suffering from extremely dry skin, the lotion began to beckon me to try it again. So I did. Three weeks later, everything seemed just fine and I was beginning to hope that the first reaction might have just been a fluke. Until one night, when my legs began itching so fiercely that I thought I might wear off my fingers trying to scratch through my jeans. Peeling off the jeans and my long johns, I discovered…angry red hot patches behind my knees, and a prickly red rash all up and down my legs. Wonderful.

Then, a stroke of genius/suspicion struck. A stroke of genius/suspicion that should have hit me way back in December when I bought the lotion, or at least when I had the first reaction. I grabbed the bottle, sat down at the computer and painstakingly looked up all of the characters on the bottle. Fortunately xuezhongwen.net (which saves our butts on a regular basis) has a little sketch pad where you can draw in characters that you don’t yet recognize. I used that function to find all the characters in the dictionary, then used the translator…

…and discovered that my “lotion” was not lotion after all. It was body wash…intended to be slathered on in the shower, foamed up, and then (probably most importantly) RINSED OFF. Not, mind you, rubbed INTO the skin twice a day for several weeks in a row. How could I make this mistake? Easily enough, when you’re functionally illiterate. This bottle was located in the lotion section of the body wash/lotion aisle. The English on the bottle said “Silk Moisturizing”…and the texture of this stuff is really thick, like a nice body cream. I didn’t know most of the characters on the bottle, so I just took location, texture, and the few English words to draw a conclusion as to what the product was.

Suddenly, it all made sense…and I dashed off to the shower to rinse away the soap residue that was making my legs so itchy. Five minutes later, the itchiness was greatly relieved but my ego was still feeling a little bruised over the whole thing. Of course I had reacted to this product…it was never intended to be left ON the surface of the skin for that long!

Which makes me wonder…will I still be allergic to this stuff if I’m using it properly? I’m not sure…once my legs have peeled and returned to normal again, I may be tempted to try it as a body wash and see how it works. Next time I buy something, I’ll certainly be paying closer attention to those characters on the bottles, and running them through the translator before I go deciding how to use a certain product.

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Also, we’ll be gone for two days/one night starting tomorrow…we’re going north of Beijing to hike one of the less restored (and apparently most beautiful) sections of the Great Wall. It’s supposed to be a pretty challenging hike, but we’re looking forward to it. This is a just a teaser to let you know that the next post will probably involve lots of beautiful pictures. Other upcoming posts will (most likely) continue the series on beauty.

Pronounced: qí lín
Means: One of these:

Sometimes called a “Chinese unicorn” or a Kirin (from Japanese), it’s an auspicious, mythical creature that brings serenity/prosperity, but can become fierce when defending the righteous from evildoers. It has the horns of a deer, the head of a dragon, the torso of a fish, the legs and feet of an ox or horse, and the tail of a lion. Its presence is a good omen. We occasionally seem them outside temples and places like that, so I decided to find out what they were.

(This is probably the last Chinese New Year post.)

Chinese New Year may be even bigger than Christmas. It’s also the only time of the year when the millions of migrant workers – whose backbreaking labour for often less-than-promised wages is building China’s booming cities – get to return to their villages and see their families. Millions choose this life over trying to eke out an existence in their hometowns.

This video is a folk song for the migrant workers set to images from this year’s New Year’s migration and the chaos that came with it. At the worst possible time of year – the onset of the world’s biggest annual migration – severe snowstorms crippled China’s vulnerable train and power systems. Three electrical workers died while trying to restore power. The situation at the train stations was so bad that the Chinese PM apologized to stranded crowds at a train station in person. English translation of the lyrics is below.

“Returning Home 2008″

Windy Snow
I am on my way home
Mom is sleeping by the road
She was expecting I would be home
My old village looks run down in the winter
We migrant workers are away from home and working all over the country
We are the migratory birds of this time
Fly over the freezing walls, fly and fly…
The dreams are with us on the way home
Fly over neon lights, fly and fly…
I am missing you when I am going home

Father is really getting old
His hair is turning gray
He is waiting for me at the door…
Fly over the freezing walls, fly and fly…
[translation found here]

There’s video all over YouTube about the storm and resultant hardship. Here’s one that gives a taste of the situation at the train stations, as everyone, not just migrant workers, tries to go home for the holidays.

Today we partied with the neighbours! It’s chū wǔ (初五), and that means people are finished the obligatory visits to relatives, so they start visiting and bringing gifts to friends. It seemed like almost everyone we saw this morning was buying or carrying gifts on their way to their friends’ homes (we were out doing the same thing). It’s also another special day for jiǎo zi (饺子) and firecrackers (but not like New Year’s Eve). So, we made jiǎo zi and ate lunch with Mr. Sòng and Mrs. Lǐ, and then had dinner with Shine Far’s family. Here are some photos, descriptions below each one (click for full size):

I love this photo. They were 29 years old (now they’re in their 60′s).

Mrs. Lǐ takes Jessica through family photos. She wanted to be a painter, and in 1961 she passed the university entrance exams into an art school, but was denied because one of her older brothers and several brothers-in-law had bad political histories (they were secretaries for the pre-Liberation city government). She says she went crazy for a while and cried a lot, but finally accepted a regular job in a state-owned garment factory making clothes. The walls of their apartment are covered in her paintings, but she never got to study art formally.

Making boiled dumplings (bāo jiǎo zi; 包饺子), the Chinese equivalent of pirogies. You’re supposed to eat jiǎo zi on this day in the lunar calendar.

They’d prepared a huge lunch and we were stuffed. A childhood friend of their son also came to visit. The dog’s name is Hǔ zi (虎子).

In addition to saying “hello,” “nǐ hǎo (你好),” and “gōng xǐ fā cái (恭喜发财),” their bird growls and barks like the dog and beeps like the microwave. They told us the more they can say, or the more they are able to learn, the more expensive they are. If they learn “dirty speech” (脏话; zāng huà) it lowers their value (so those people who told us about birds learning bad words weren’t kidding after all!)

After getting totally stuffed and chatting for a while, we returned home to rest our brains for a bit before heading downstairs at 6pm for a huge hotpot feast with “Shine Far’s” family (I really ought to stop calling him that, but he doesn’t have an English name yet; his Chinese name is 光远; Guāng Yuǎn). Around 10pm we had the obligatory jiǎo zi and finally headed home at 11:30. Guāng Yuǎn is our language exchange partner from the summer. He just got accepted into some American universities, so they’re all really happy. We had a great time. I forgot to take a photo during the meal, but took one during the jiǎo zi.

We’re so stuffed. We just ate and talked all day. It’s time for bed!

A conversation yesterday made me realize some curious similarities between Chinese New Year and the ancient Hebrew Passover. In a sense, traditional Chinese New Year is a passover.

(I totally stole this photo from Shannon.)

To “celebrate the New Year” is literally, “pass (the) year” (过年). You can greet people with “Pass the year good!” (过年好!). In more traditional areas people still literally congratulate one another for “passing the year,” or perhaps, for being passed by the ‘Year.’ The annoying traditional songs looped in supermarkets for the last week – the Chinese equivalent of cheesy Christmas music overdose – feature the greeting, “Congratulations!” (恭喜!). But why do people start congratulating one another after midnight? What has passed?

“Pass the ‘year’” is a pun or play on the idea that the monster, called ‘Year,’ who comes out at New Year’s to eat people, has “passed” over. It’s as if to say, “Congratulations! The monster has passed you by!” This monster hates the colour red, and people adorn their doors with it across the top and down both sides, similar to what the ancient Hebrews did with lamb’s blood before the Exodus, so that God would “pass over” their homes during the night when God came to kill the firstborn of Egypt. These red banner sets are standard CNY decorations; even our door has them:

(We’re on the right, the neighbours are on the left.)

I suspect most people merely see these phrases and decorations as traditions vaguely meant to bring good luck/fortune and ward off bad. I don’t know what percentage of the population is even aware of the more traditional meanings (especially in the cities), perhaps like many Westerners don’t know why we have Christmas trees, hang red stockings, or where Santa Claus came from (many New Year traditions are dying out). But the roots of these particular Chinese traditions apparently involve adorning the lintel and door posts in red so that a mystical being will literally “pass” over the family without killing anyone… curious. I wonder which tradition is older: the Hebrew Exodus or the Chinese year monster. You can read more about the nián shòu (年兽), or “year monster,” here.

North vs. South: who has the best CNY celebrations and men?
Some more notable Chinese New Year-ness…
In this video, Sufei, the acutely unmarried Jewish girl in Beijing, talks with some migrant workers as they leave the city for their home provinces to “pass the year” with their families, who they only get see once a year. They’re part of the largest annual migration on earth.

She also interviews Beijingers and Hong Kongers about the different ways northerners and southerners celebrate Chinese New Year, and about which place has better men.

Includes a good clear dose of that Cantonese Chinese New Year greeting we used to mimic in elementary school, in case you’ve been wondering all your life what it was we were supposedly trying to say.