Pronounced: rěn
Means: to tolerate, to endure
Closer look: This character for “tolerate” has two parts. It’s made by placing a knife blade (刃) over a heart (心).

We’ve returned to Tianjin’s “south city” twice during the weekend following the first trip, chatted with more people, witnessed things disappear before our eyes, and spent some more time with Mr. Wu. We learned a little bit more, and noticed some things we missed the first time, like some of the artistry built into the old structures. Some of it disappeared over the weekend:

We’ve added tons more photos to the 南市 gallery – Jessica’s even in some! =)

We met an ancient couple living in a compound that used to have four different courtyards, each with 20 families. They were the only family left in their section. They said they’d lived there for over 50 years. On Friday the main gate was guarded by a pair of weather-worn stone lions, some interesting woodwork stretched over the doors – by Sunday these things were gone, along with their duck, duck pen, and neighbour’s houses:

On Friday they’d told me they’re not going, but I couldn’t tell if they meant immediately, or at all. We crawled around the compound a bit and found a few other families still there, and some old stonework that looked interesting. There were even some other Tianjin locals there, just trying to see the place before it was gone. They said it was one of the last of its kind in Tianjin.

From what people have told us, this area of the city grew up near the river where goods would come in. It was a major market area, incredibly dense, with all the best and the worst of the city crammed into a few square kilometers. Now, if you step out of the rubble and cross a few lanes of traffic, you’ll find yourself in the middle of a shiny new trendy shopping centre with Western fast-food restaurants, thumping bass, and expensive clothes.

Before I left on Friday, I couldn’t resist checking out the local public bath. One large room was full of beds, tables, and a few dozen naked, smoking men either sleeping or playing cards (pretty sure they weren’t sleeping and smoking at the same time). The back had a room with two hot-tub size pools and a wall of showers. They were all super friendly and didn’t seem to mind at all that a foreigner was having a little walk-through.

We’ve added many more photos to the 南市 gallery.

Mr. China’s Son is a special book for a number of reasons. Unlike most of the other “scar literature” I’ve read so far (memoirs written by victims of the Mainland’s 20th century policies and society), which conveys the experiences of female, urban, educated, socially privileged victims, Mr. China’s Son was written in English by a Chinese peasant. Not only do we get a first-hand account of life at a time and level of Chinese society where most people didn’t have the ability to write their own stories, He Li-yi‘s English is unique. He writes many idioms and terms literally, giving the narrative a special flavour (“university” is “big-school,” for example). This, along with many quoted conversations and his surprisingly blunt honesty, makes the culture just shine through. He writes for English speakers, and each chapter contains footnotes that explain various details of the story. It’s great material if you’re interested in what it took for a regular guy and his family to survive the second half of China’s 20th century.

The author has a couple web address (owing to the difficulty in accessing them in the Mainland), which are an extension of his desire to be a “cultural bridge.” I especially encourage you to click around this one; it’s got to be one of the most charming places in the whole internet:

• Mr. China’s Son Cultural Exchange Bridge

Several parts of the website are worth checking out. The reader response Q&A section displays some of his remarkable and disarming honesty. Some samples:

7. How did your experience during the CR influence your life after it was over?
After the CulturaI RevoIution, I became very nervous about political affairs. I no longer believed people. I always kept silence in all kinds of meetings, and didn’t want to express my thoughts directly. I taught my two sons to think over everything again and again before speaking out. Above all, I would not allow my sons and grandsons to rebuild our old house in the village into a very modern one, I told them to keep it poor looking, just repair it, but don’t sell it.

8. Did you see anything positive come out of the ten years of oppression?
Yes, there are three things: (1) People realized that relationships between family members are extremely weak. (2) People realized that to faithfully run after somebody great might not result in a good end. (3) People realized that the poor-and-lower class is by no means great.

I also see three negative things. (1) People became poorer; (2) People do not trust each other, (3) Many people became more selfish.

10.Did you ever feel that there were times when you had to compromise what you believed during the revolution? If so, what made you keep your faith in your morals and beliefs?
Yes, at that time, only if I could manage to live on and on, then I would compromise anything. If I refused to compromise, then the only way out was TO DIE. For a time, I had become a person who had forgotten ‘I had received a college-level education’. When I first heard some government workers came to apologize, I thought people were making fun of me again. I thought they wanted to fool me again.

At that time, I compromised because I wanted to be alive. I believed: “If I could keep the mountains green, no need to worry about ‘no firewood to cook’. ” Later, facts proved those who refused to compromise were struggled to death or committed suicide. Luckily I compromised. A wise leader (Mr. Deng) appeared in Beijing. I was able to become a teacher, and be able to write a book to tell the world what had happened in China.

11. What values of today do you see replacing that of yesterday? How do you feel about these values?
After 1979, an economic construction began in a BIG WAY. The result was: CHINA HAS BECOME STRONGER AND STRONGER, BUT AT THE SAME TIME, EVERY BODY RAN AFTER MONEY. Some people earned (made) money through hard work, but some became rich NOT from hard work. The situation looked like we did almost everything in a CRAZY WAY. In other words, in whatever we did, we did TO EXCESS. I don’t think this is the correct way of solving problems. I hope our next generation will learn a lesson from our history. What we must do is to try our level best to avoid, get rid of ‘ TOO CRAZY’! If we keep on doing everything in a TOO CRAZY way, new problems will certainly appear again.

(The author’s other links are here and here.)

Today at the gym, I suddenly felt someone run their hand down my back and over my backside (backside meaning rump). More than slightly startled, I turned around to find a middle-aged Chinese lady smiling a friendly smile at me. She said “You’ve gotten thinner! I saw you here when you started coming last month.” I wasn’t sure how to answer, especially after feeling like my personal space had been invaded more than just a little bit, but I think I managed to choke out a “Thank you!” She continued the conversation saying, “Yeah, in this month I can tell you’ve gotten thinner.” Then, to emphasize her point, she ran her hand over my back and rump AGAIN.

At this point, with all the uninvited backside rubbing, I was feeling just a little bit out of my comfort zone. But she seemed really nice, and I know that personal space rules work a little differently here…so I kept chatting with her. “What country are you from?” she asked. This question, by the way, is one that I answer anywhere from 2-25 times in a given day. It’s one of the first questions any foreigner will be asked when they meet someone new. I told her that I’m an American, which led her to tell me that her daughter hopes she can go study abroad once she graduates from one of the local universities. At that point, we both went our separate ways…she went to the ladies locker room, while I went to finish up my workout. While I worked out, I pondered the idea of personal space differences and comfort zones…never suspecting that on my return to the locker room, those comfort zones would be tested even more!

For the record, ladies locker rooms in China work a little differently than in the US. For one, there is a whole lot more nakedness. Unclothed ladies stand around putting on makeup, blowdrying hair, and rummaging through workout bags. There seems to be quite a bit more comfort with the same-sex nudity than in most locker rooms I’ve been to in the US…I think the luxury of private shower/changing stalls has made us a bit more prudish/private in this regard. But I’m getting used to it…”when in Rome” as they say. Though I must say that my whiteness does attract a little more attention than I’m used to, so while I don’t mind changing at the gym…I save my showering for the comfortable privacy of my own home. I guess I’m not thoroughly Roman (or Chinese) yet.

Even though I’m now pretty comfortable with the locker room situation, today’s locker room happenings would wreak a little bit of havoc upon my sense of personal space, propriety, and comfort. I reached my locker and just as I unlocked it, I spotted the (now naked and freshly showered) backside-rubbing lady. As I turned around, she shoved another naked female form at me and said “Hey! This is my daughter!” The naked daughter, standing all of about 3 cm away from me, said (in English) “Hi! I’m an English major!” I had to quell my urge to laugh at the situation…it seems that any chance to practice English must be seized, regardless of how clothed one may or may not happen to be. So…working very hard not to laugh, I said “Oh, your mom told me you want to study abroad. Do you know where you want to go?” At this, the daughter stepped a little closer to me and said, “America! Of course!” As I stepped back a little and tried not to look as awkward as I felt, I said something like “Oh yeah…Canada is also a good place to go study.”

Her English was really quite good…she told me her English name (Michelle), informed me that she chose it because of a character she liked in an American movie, and that she’s quite a big fan of American movies and TV shows. For a naked English practice, it was pretty good….and mercifully short. Just as suddenly as she had been introduced/thrown at me, she excused herself saying “Oh! I need to get dressed!”…almost as if she had just realized that she wasn’t wearing anything. As she dashed to her locker, she said “Oh yeah, by the way, so nice to meet you!” I replied that it was nice to meet her as well…which, by the way, it actually was. She was really polite, and I didn’t get any pressure to become a language practice partner or to give my phone number (a welcome relief, since that’s usually where these conversations wind up).

So the locker room today was a little awkward and uncomfortable…but no permanent damage done, except to my comfort zones. And who needs those anyway? Especially when China has such an un-subtle way of demolishing them when you’re least expecting it.

I was blown away by my first time wandering through Tianjin’s condemned “south market” neighbourhoods (南市) yesterday, which will themselves be blown away in about two months. These are mostly what’s left of Tianjin’s hú tòngs (胡同) – the old-style network of communal courtyards and alleyways. They, along with the oldest apartment blocks, are being flattened before the Olympics. Much of it is already abandoned and reduced to rubble, but there are still many families living and operating businesses in the midst of it all. It was often hard for me to tell what was abandoned and what was still occupied. More than once I photographed what I thought was an abandoned courtyard only to discover families still living in it. I spent close to four hours wandering around in the claustrophobia-inducing maze of alleyways, talking with the people still living there and taking pictures.

Click here or click any of these photos to see the 南市 photo gallery.

The people were fantastic. Only one of the many I talked with seemed irritated that I was there, and she asked some pointed questions like “Why are you here looking at all this luàn qī bā zāo?” (乱七八糟 – mess, chaos). But overall the residents were curious and talkative, and two separate older folks even offered from their own initiative to help me photograph stuff.

One resident invited me in to photograph what was left of her courtyard compound, which she with her husband and son had shared with twelve other families (the compound had spaces for sixteen). Now there are only two families left; even the pigeons in the rooftop pigeon coop are gone. In a condemned apartment building, an old man saw me taking photos and stuck his head over the second story railing to ask me what I was doing. After hearing my explanation he said, “Let me put a shirt on, I’ll be right down.” He tottered out with his cane gave me a little guided tour!

Everyone told the same story: in roughly two months, the entire place is getting flattened in preparation for the Olympics. Each family is given financial compensation so they can get a new place, but they all said it wasn’t enough (the Olympics are inflating housing prices, plus when you wipe thousands of dwellings off the market, prices go up). I asked people how they felt about it, or how they thought most people there felt about it. General consensus seemed to say that the young folks are happy to leave, but the old people are sad. My ‘tour guide’ said that some families had lived in this area for 200 or even 300 years. Everyone seemed to imply that, on the whole, this wasn’t a great place to live as far as facilities go; the plumbing is bad, and it’s crowded, dirty, and noisy.

This is Mr. Wǔ (on the left), my impromptu tour guide. He led me out of the cramped alleys to one of the main intersections and kept saying, “Nǐ suí biàn zhào! Suí biàn zhào!” (你随便照 – Take photos freely!) He said a couple years ago these streets were “especially rè nao” (特别热闹 – bustling with excitment), lined end-to-end with vendors and crowds so thick you “couldn’t hardly get a bike through.” Now it’s downright depressing. Piles of rubble and garbage line the roads and alleys, yet the odd tea house and restaurant still operate, even if the businesses next door are just gutted shells holding piles of brick and trash.

When people asked what I was doing there – and it was a little uncomfortable being a white guy with a camera in the middle of all that – I told them I’d heard that soon there wouldn’t be any more of these places in Tianjin, and that I thought these places had a lot of interesting history; a lot of people have grown up here. That explanation seemed to go over pretty well.

I hope to return soon. Mr. Wǔ says we can eat some 饺子 talk some more.

Two important words to know: you’ll see “拆” painted inside a circle on the buildings in many of the photos. It’s a verb for “break up; split open; destroy” and is part of the word 清拆 (demolition of buildings for a new project; literally “clean/pure destroy”). “铲平” is the word the residents used to describe what would happen to the area in about two months: “to flatten; to raze to the ground.”

See the 南市 photo gallery here.

Pronouced: chāi
Means: to tear down/open/apart. This is the character used to mark condemned buildings. Often found surrounded by sticker advertisements for cheap moving companies.

Pronounced: fù huó jié
Literally: return alive festival
Means: Easter

I found some Easter art online from two Chinese artists. Click either image to go to the artist’s galleries.

“Pilate Washes His Hands”, by He Qi.

“Nail Mark” by Li Wei San.

You can see much more from each artist online.

Living in a different cultural context can really make mincemeat out of your sense of right and wrong. Here’s a little example from over the last few days.

One of our foreign friends here is from Taiwan, but went to an international high school and then completed undergrad and grad school in the U.S. She married an American, speaks Mandarin and English perfectly and functions naturally in both cultures. This makes her a fantastic “undercover foreigner” in the sense that she can hang out with Chinese people and they’ll treat her more or less as a cultural insider. She reports that the number one complaint her Mainland friends have against their foreign friends is that foreigners too often think Chinese people are lying to them, when they’re actually being extra considerate to the foreigners. Some of our recent (and recurring) experiences illustrate how cultural context can greatly influence which actions are right/moral/proper/considerate and which ones aren’t.

Desperate times call for desperate measures pushy mothers
It’s not uncommon for someone we barely know – say, the bike park attendant we chat with a few times a week on our way to the gym – to ask us for our phone number. Lots of people do this, and often it’s because they want to practice English or they want us to help their child practice English. People can actually be really pushy and manipulative about it – at least that’s how it feels to us as foreigners.

Mothers are easily the worst. They will talk you into a corner where you’re forced to choose between being rude to them or doing what they want. I’ve had mothers literally stop and chat/negotiate with me on the sidewalk for the better part of an hour, refusing to give me an “out,” trying to get me to agree to tutor their kid. Part of the problem is my cultural ineptness, part of it is that they’re just really pushy and desperate. Competition among today’s Mainland students is “cruel,” to quote Guāng Yuǎn (光远 – who just received acceptance letters from some American engineering PhD programs), and many mothers will exhaust every last trick in the book before they give up on the slim chance that the random foreigner they’ve just met will be their child’s advantage. I can’t say I blame them. (We haven’t received this treatment from any fathers yet.)

Saying “no” to these kinds of people can be pretty difficult – at least, difficult if you really want to be culturally appropriate, not cause offense, and in some cases, continue a relationship with the person (especially when they are people we see regularly). The typical polite Chinese response to this kind of situation looks like a straight up lie to Westerners. But in China, it’s hard sometimes for foreigners to know when a lie is a lie, and when a “lie” is actually the most considerate and appreciated response.

We know a lot of foreigners who feel that, unless you’re sheltering Jews from Nazis, you shouldn’t tell lies, period. I lean that way myself. But China throws this kind of ethic a curve ball. I’ll give you a current situation we’re in, and let you (try to) judge for yourself. If you haven’t encounter this kind of cross-cultural experience before, I think you’ll be surprised at how unstraightforward seemingly straightforward moral judgments can become in a different cultural context.

Our current somewhat ‘sticky’ situation
Four of us foreigners go to a local gym at least three days a week. We have to park at a guarded bike park spot and pay 5 máo ($0.07) to one of the three attendants, usually a young guy, an older man, and a mother of a teenager. We really enjoy chatting with them every time we go.

Last week the mother tried each of us one after the other to get an English tutor for her son. We all refused in turn (and unbeknownst to us at the time, we could have been much more culturally appropriate about it, though by our Western standards we weren’t rude in the slightest). Then last Saturday as I was leaving, the older man tried several times to get the younger guy to ask me for my phone number, deliberately putting me on the spot. The younger guy sensed that I didn’t want to give it to him and kept saying, “Don’t listen to him, forget it,” but it was a little awkward. I assume they’ll keep trying (today at lunch they tried to get James’ address), and here’s the question I discussed with my teacher this morning: How can I refuse in a way that works (meaning they ‘get the message’ and quit bugging us for our phone numbers and English) but allows me to keep up a relationship with them (we can still have fun chatting a few times each week)? We genuinely like these folks, but we aren’t going to spend our time teaching English.

My lesson in class this morning was about discussing “customs” and “habits,” and I wanted to know if I could just tell people, “I’m not accustomed to giving out my phone number to people I’m only recently acquainted with” (and put the blame on cultural differences, rather than anything personal with them). My teacher said I could say this, but it’s not the best response. Making up a transparent excuse is better. He suggested: “You can tell a ‘lie.’ Tell them that you’re in the middle of getting your phone number changed and you don’t have the new number yet.” In North America, that’s a lie – harmless maybe, and a poor one, but definitely a lie.

However in this case it’s supposed to be obvious. If I tell them my phone number is being changed, they will assume that’s not really the case and that I just don’t want to tell them my number; there’s no confusion about the meaning being communicated here. It also leaves no room for argument. This transparent “lie,” which literally says one thing but actually clearly ‘communicates’ something else, is the most considerate and appreciated way to refuse them. It saves their ‘face.’ They might not like that I refused, but they’ll see that I’m doing it in the nicest way possible, indicating that I do actually care a little. In fact, my teacher said, if I tell this ‘lie,’ “…they’ll think, ‘Wow, this foreigner really knows Chinese culture and how to be polite!’” So if I ‘lie’ to them, they might even be impressed!

This is the Chinese way, and it illustrates some of the slightly different roles that words can play in communication here (navigating ‘face,’ servicing relationships, etc.). Observe this parallel advice from two Chinese culture scholars* – first for foreigners interacting with Chinese:

1. Focus on how something is said – relational and mutual-face meanings often outweigh literal, content meanings.
2. Learn to read paralinguistic cues, such as facial expressions, body movements, gestures, and pauses.
3. Develop a belief that words can be inadequate and insufficient.

And for Chinese interacting with foreigners:

1. Focus on what is said; try not to read too much into the words or be oversensitive to nonverbal nuances.
2. Learn to accept what is said.
3. Develop a belief that verbal messages and feedback are powerful and effective.

So when is a ‘lie’ a lie?
So here’s the rub for Westerners who care about their personal integrity, want to be trustworthy, and therefore don’t want to lie to people: Must the real meaning of a statement be confined in the literal words used, or can the real meaning of a statement be honestly conveyed in nonverbals that seem to contradict the literal meaning?

We use words (and a lot of other things) to convey certain meanings. Good communication happens when the “intended meaning” (what the speaker means) and the “received meaning” (what the listener understands the speaker to mean) are more or less the same. What if everyone involved understands the words “my phone number is in the middle of getting switched at the moment” to actually mean “I don’t want to give you my phone number, but I really don’t want to create any bad feelings between us because I care enough about you and our relationship to protect your ‘face’ by not saying “no” and directly denying you”? The statement isn’t meant to be taken literally, and it won’t be, but plenty of meaning is still more or less accurately conveyed in the choice of words. There’s a Chinese phrase for this kind of communication, often translated, “the meaning behind the words” (言外之意).

I can already hear people objecting, for example, “But Jesus said, ‘Let your yes be yes and your no be no’!” OK, fine. But what does that actually mean? Does it mean (and here’s the version naturally assumed by Westerners): “When you speak the word ‘yes,’ your intended meaning must always literally be yes. When you’re speaking, literal meaning must always trump all other forms of communication.” Or does it mean (perhaps a more Chinese culture-friendly interpretation): “When you communicate or indicate ‘yes,’ then you must follow through with it. Don’t indicate ‘yes’ one moment and then go back on it later”? (Somebody needs to go have some fun with exegesis!)

If you stop to think about it, there a tons of common situations in English where we use words to mean what they don’t actually literally say, but to us it’s “obvious” in those situations what the intended meaning really is. Our delivery, the context, and our non-verbals all speak quite loudly and quite clearly, so clearly that we would never think of such instances as “lies.” Sarcasm is only one kind of example.

Jury hung on account of cultural favouritism
Although it may sound like I’m arguing that it’s all fine and good for people to “lie” so long as they’re “lying” to Chinese people, I’m actually not sure what I think about all this. Maybe the culture stress is predisposing me to be contrary with Chinese culture today (yesterday afternoon we had a “fun” experience with a particularly obnoxious local – but it wasn’t literally fun, actually… ha, so am I lying?). Although I’m slowly learning to appreciate the importance of ‘face,’ I can’t help but feel like, at the end of the day, the world would be a better place, and China in particular, if the ‘face’ game was drastically toned down and we shifted the scales in favour of more direct speech. There is no shortage of Chinese social scholars who agree that ‘face’ is actually a major weakness of Chinese culture, but this indirect form of communicating also rubs my Western cultural fur the wrong way in more than one area, so I don’t want to pretend this is some sort of dispassionate cultural analysis. I wonder how my opinion will change over the years as we slowly learn to live into Chinese culture more and more.

P.S. - Speaking of our rubbing our cultural sensibilities the wrong way, we happened upon a thick crowd of people and bikes clogging up an intersection on our way back from the gym today. Someone was lying in the road – we assume he got hit, but it was hard to tell in the confusion which cars were involved and which were just trying to get around the crowd. A policeman was already there, and we didn’t stop to gawk. That’s another cultural observation for another time: how crowds will stand close and stare unapologetically at other people’s public suffering. At least the guy wasn’t in danger of getting hit again.

———————
*From Communicating Effectively with the Chinese (pp. 85-86) by Ge Gao and Stella W.C. Ting-Toomey.

Pronounced: yán wài zhī yì
Means: the implied meaning; the meaning behind the words; what’s written between the lines, etc.