Click here to read Lindy’s permanently-unforgettable episode in which she is discovered in a rural Sichuan public shower (the only shower in the area) by a bunch of village ladies.
“…I heard the blood curdling screams coming from the other side of the shower room. “Waiguoren! Waiguoren! Lai ba! Lai ba!” Which loosely translated means, “Hey ya’ll! Come! Come and see the foreigner!””
I found this via The China Beat: an interesting gallery of colour photos from 1972 China is now online here.
We included some creative anti-theft techniques in our “How to Ride a Bike in Tianjin” article, but it turns out that the bike theft in Liaoning is so bad that bike owners are taking it a step further and actually vandalizing their own bicycles.
On the one time my wife and one of her American girl friends dragged me to IKEA in Beijing, I was very grateful for the Beijing approach to IKEA:
Customers hop into display beds and nap, pose for snapshots with the decor and enjoy the air conditioning and free soda refills. They just don’t buy much.
I brought a book, found the comfiest giant armchair in the whole place, and took a nap while they girls shopped. And I wasn’t alone, either.
Aside from personal motivations, character, attitude, and general posture toward China and Chinese people, this is the one decision that enhanced our China experience more than any other single thing we did during our first two years in China: we moved out of the foreigner ghetto and into the most average-looking Chinese neighbourhood we could find.
(If what follows starts to sound culturally patronizing, just hold on… I saved that part for the end.)
When we first arrived in China with next-to-no Mandarin or knowledge of our city, the organization that helped arrange our visas and school placement also arranged our apartment: we had a prearranged flat in a complex occupied entirely by foreigners where the manager had good English (back in the day this was the only place foreigners were allowed to live in Tianjin). It was super convenient, especially for China newbies who are usually high-maintenance. From the standpoint of an organization facilitating foreigners’ language school placement it was ideal. But for foreigners interested in China and Chinese, it sucked.
We’d come to China to study language and culture, and we’d decided before we even arrived that we’d be moving out of “洋人街” ASAP. It was inconvenient for language practice, and besides, going to a foreign country and living unnecessarily isolated from your new city’s regular people seemed really lame. So after about two months of classes we took a vocabulary list of apartment words, a map, and went and squinted at the scrawled 汉字 on the papers tacked to boards outside the little first-floor rental agencies tucked away in the surrounding neighbourhoods.
We knew what we wanted: an average neighbourhood (“average” as defined by locals, not foreigners) with a lot of outdoor community life and an apartment we could tolerate and that our neighbours, teachers, and local friends wouldn’t feel strange in. Surely, we thought, that isn’t too much to ask. Foreigners from one of the international schools told us we wouldn’t find “anything” (read: “livable”) for twice the price of what we eventually paid (also twice the price of what they said was the average Tianjin salary). We went with what our teachers told us instead, quickly realizing that foreigners can spend years in China and still know next-to-nothing about it.
Of course it was awkward pointing at a circle on a map and mispronouncing vocab words to rental agents who had maybe never talked face-to-face with a foreigner in their lives, but we managed to have three apartments shown to us. I wanted the first one, but the landlord balked when he discovered we were foreigners (that’s when we learned what “他有事” really means). The third location was perfect — better than we’d hoped. We incurred some 关系 debt because we had to ask a local friend (the boyfriend of a fellow foreigner) for a big favour to come with us to the contract negotiation and signing. It went smoothly, so we borrowed an electric 三轮车 and moved in.
Rather than bring local Tianjiners into our cultural space, we wanted to meet them in their own world where they were more comfortable. The single biggest benefit that living in this kind of neighbourhood gave us was exponentially increasing our daily opportunities for interaction with average, mainstream locals more on their turf than ours. We couldn’t come or go without speaking to someone, and usually more than one. The old boys club that hung out on the bike repair corner regularly included me in their Chinese chess, outdoor meals, and teasing. Families would invite us into their homes on the various big holidays. The only person we met in that neighbourhood in two years who had any amount of English — besides one charming but mentally handicapped man who would yell “I love you!” at us — was a university student three floors down who became a language exchange partner. It was a laid back but crowded, active community where language practice opportunities with everyone from laid-off factory workers to university professors were immediately available in excess of what we could handle. Those neighbours taught us more about China and made China more interesting, alive, and lovable to us than any books or classes ever could. Even on the worst days, we never regretted our decision to live there.
A few months after moving in our teachers, in their more candid moments, would sometimes confess that they felt extra awkward and distanced when visiting their foreign friends’ apartments for two big reasons. First, the furniture, decor, food, and even the way they were received as guests all felt foreign. Second, although the foreigners were taking a step down in living standards, to the Chinese their apartments just screamed wealth and economic privilege. In addition to the unavoidable language and cultural barriers, these foreigners, through their lifestyle choices, were emphasizing another gulf of distance between themselves and local Chinese: economic disparity.
The economic privilege in which most of us were raised (speaking globally here) gets us in two big ways. The first is largely practical, physical, external. The second is intensely personal.
Physical Annoyances & Inconveniences
My mother would be appalled if she saw that apartment. The whitewash was peeling and rubbed off on your clothes. The kitchen was the size of a closet. The toilet was in the shower and the exposed plumbing both precarious and temperamental. The sewer gas that came up the drains in the evenings smelled so bad it woke us up at night until we devised an overly complicated water-bottle-in-a-plastic-bag-hung-from-a-nail method for mostly-sealing the bathroom drain (plumbers don’t do U-bends in Tianjin). 
The windows let all the coal dust in and the layout of the place didn’t make sense to us. The electricity often shorted out and we had long extension cords running everywhere. There was only enough hot water in the winter for fast showers. I wore a toque to bed the week before they turned on the heat. In the words of younger versions of my little sisters: it was totally ghetto. But we would choose to live there again, no question. It was totally worth it. That apartment was slightly better or slightly worse than those of our neighbours, depending on the neighbours, and close enough to what they knew that our Chinese friends and neighbours felt much less awkward when they visited than they might have otherwise. I mention these things to give fair warning: if you aim to move into an average Chinese neighbourhood chances are you’ll be getting an average Chinese apartment. Count the cost, because not all foreigners are willing to pay it. Also, the neighbourhood and apartment described here, while unremarkable for that district of Tianjin, is still probably well above average for most places in China.
Uncomfortable Personal Discoveries
(Warning: confession/soap box/rant/sermon ahead.)
Whether it’s right or not, what’s a huge step down in living standards for the average foreigner is normal for the average Mainlander. If that embarrassing, awkward and unfair economic truth makes you feel uncomfortable and maybe even vaguely guilty, I promise I know how you feel, but I don’t apologize for bringing it up. That’s what we get for being the economically elite six percent of an otherwise much-less-privileged world. Keeping the hoi polloi at a distance so that we’re less poignantly reminded of this stark economic reality and our consciences are less likely to be called out does not make it any less real — but living in an average urban Chinese neighbourhood makes it harder to avoid.
If you’re a thinking, reflective person at all then living significantly below the comforts you’re accustomed to brings special challenges. 
Basically, you begin to discover how much of a pampered, manicured, whiny, elitist snob you are who has tragically confused unwarranted privileges with basic entitlements. When you get genuinely frustrated and upset about how sub-standard everything is, then you can enjoy the guilt that comes with realizing that you can’t handle what’s more than good enough for most of the world; for thinking that living more like the majority of the world is such a big sacrifice for which you should get some sort of multiculturalism medal. And when you’re in a good mood and those physical inconveniences aren’t annoying you as much as they would the average foreigner, then you can hate yourself for actually feeling proud of the fact that you deigned to lower your living standard closer to that of the global average, for thinking you’re better than all those other foreigners, and — last but certainly not least — for being so patronizing to the local Chinese.
The silver lining, I guess, is that living this way also creates ample opportunity to contemplate lifestyles that respectfully transcend economic divisions while still being honest about who we are and acting morally with our affluence given the economic disparity in the world… Anyway, that’s a big tangent I maybe should have saved for another post, but it’s part of our experience, so I’m leaving it in.
That old apartment with its neighbourhood comes to mind today because right at the moment friends in Tianjin are securing an apartment for us for when we arrive in a couple weeks (we had to let the old one go when we left for Canada). When friends are doing us this huge favour we obviously don’t want to be picky, and with the baby we won’t be as mobile or tolerant/flexible as we were before. I’m also only on a year-long contract, so I don’t know how likely we’ll be to move after we arrive. The photos they sent make this second apartment look several notches above the first. I guess we’ll see…
Fun Chinese Apartment & Neighbourhood-related Posts:
Related “Living in China” posts:
Pronounced: sā jiāo
Means: to act act coquettishly; to act like a spoiled child; to throw a tantrum; pout; over-the-top cutesy hissy-fits usually designed to manipulate their boyfriends into buying them things; what young, urban Chinese women are notorious for, especially in Shanghai.
In Shanghai advertising, chances are the good mother or cutesy girlfriend will be Chinese, while sexually charged ads (i.e. for lingerie) featuring aggressive wanton hussies invariably use white women. After a year in Shanghai, one 老外女子 reflects on the relationship between race and gender and on being a white woman in China: Peter Hessler and laowai nuzi
Planning to eventually move back to your home country after an extended stay in China? Then you have a problem. I suggest you be on the lookout for this sneaky little bugger, because he will get you, and there’s no escape.
He won’t jump up in your face and assault you outright; that’s not this saboteur’s modus operandi. Instead, he’s spent the entire time you’ve lived in China scheming against you, lurking just outside your range of perception, slowly sabotaging your much-anticipated homecoming from within the subconscious regions of your mind. His name is usually some variation of “reverse culture stress” or “re-entry shock,” and he can be a nasty piece of work, especially if you fly home with unrealistic expectations, unaware and unprepared. Fortunately, although you can’t avoid him, you can be ready for him when he comes, and that can make your re-adjustment back into your home culture a much less stressful and negative experience.
When you arrive back in whatever overdeveloped, obscenely rich nation you probably came from (no offense meant to the minority of expats from developing countries; offense to expats from the overdeveloped “first world” is entirely intentional, but when you’re in the middle of a bout of reverse culture stress you’ll happily agree with me anyway), re-adjustment might not seem like too big a deal at first. Your nominally curious friends will ask you, “So, how’s China?” And you’ll answer, “Uhhh… good?” Maybe you’ll all go out for “real Chinese food,” and they’ll give you painfully awkward looks when you eat bite-by-bite straight out of the serving dishes and hold your bowl off the table close to your mouth. Or maybe your sister will freak out when she discovers that somebody put used toilet paper in the garbage can. Or maybe you’ll do like me (I wouldn’t know anything about the aforementioned toilet paper incident) and refuse to accept the fact that your home city was built for cars, not bikes, and become a road hazard by insisting on walking and biking everywhere even though you’ve forgotten how the traffic works, violating numerous by-laws in the process and making the local motorists nervous.
There are myriad ways you can be surprised by the fact that you are no longer effortlessly at home in your own culture. Many such experiences are superficial and even funny, but the accumulation of such anecdotes can result in strong, confusing and stressful underlying emotions that leave you feeling almost as disoriented in your own culture as you were when you first arrived in China. In a way it’s even worse in your own culture: unlike in China, at home you have no excuse for not fitting in, nor do you expect to ever need one. But after a few months, the romanticizing of your home culture in which you indulged while away takes a U-turn. You become more critical and angry than ever with your home society; its flaws appear all the more damning and its benefits superficial or discounted. Reverse culture stress bleeds out through your negative attitude and actions. This is not only out of character, but seemingly without cause. Your family wants to know what your problem is, but you don’t know. Re-entry stress is a sneaky little son-of-a-turtle.
Bio returned to his native Brazil after years of graduate school in Texas, and he describes his cultural re-adjustment experience this way:
Take it easy on reverse cultural shock. It was awful to me. I started questioning everything as if it was totally different from before I left. It’s such a strange feeling! Till today I still react. There is a bit of American/European value in me after the experience living abroad. I guess I learned to appreciate it.
Beth, an American physiotherapist in Tianjin, likens it to the ultimate foreigner experience:
Reentry is like you’ve been abducted by aliens and had tests performed on you then you are returned back to your planet. When you go back to your home country you look about the same but you can feel completely different and feel like you don’t know how to do some normal things you used to do every day because of the alien experience you have had living overseas.
Sonja, a native of Germany who lives in Tianjin, describes it this way:
It’s part of the parcel, I think, and often hits when least expected and can be as nagging as toothache. Toothache you can figure out quite easily, but it sometimes takes some time until the realization “Oh, I’m culture-stressed!” hits home.
How did this happen? It’s simple, really: You left Blueland and went to Yellowland, and after a few years you’ve taken on an odd greenish tinge. You haven’t really noticed or understood this gradual change, even if you think you do. In ways deeper than you realize, Yellowland has altered your preferences, comfort zones, expectations, even the autopilot that guides you through crowds and traffic. On top of all this, while you were away Blueland faded to a slightly different shade of blue. Neither you nor “Home” are the same as when you left. This means that arriving home expecting to effortlessly slide back into the way things were is a small tragedy waiting to happen. Bethany, an American grad student in Beijing, experienced this first-hand:
When I’m in a foreign country, I don’t expect to understand anybody, and nobody expects to understand me – and since this total lack of understanding finds expression in every aspect of my daily life, my expectations are all fulfilled; and though uncomfortable, I at least find comfort in knowing what to expect. When I come back home, I expect to understand everyone and for everyone to understand me – but because living in a foreign country has indelibly left its mark on me, i just end up confusing and being confused by everyone else, and I feel even more out of place and disjointed at “home” than I did in the foreign country.
Tianjin English teacher Shannon Ingleby succinctly and unforgettably describes the experience this way:
Re-entry stress is like the direction of water when you flush a toilet in China… backwards and stinky.
It’s a rude awakening – rude because it sneaks up on you, biding its time to one day ambush your hitherto subconscious assumptions with the realization that things aren’t the way you remember them in your home country, and your home country could say the same about you.
To anticipate and respond to your inevitable experience of reverse culture stress, it helps to go in with both eyes open and informed, expecting, recognizing and understanding these inevitable feelings for what they are when they hit you.
Reverse culture stress doesn’t engulf everyone with the same force. Your particular experience will likely be shaped by several related factors. Here are three of the big ones:
The longer you’re away, the more opportunity both you and your home each have to change. How much you change, of course, depends on how you spent that time abroad, how meaningfully you engaged and adapted to your host culture. If you lived, worked, and played in one of Tianjin’s lǎowài ghettos (aka 洋人街), living the life of a long-term tourist, chances are you got a smaller dose of Chinese culture; you’re still mostly blue with maybe the slightest whiff of green around the edges. But if you lived in an average Chinese neighbourhood for several years and spent most of your free time with local friends doing local things in Mandarin, you might be bright green in a few spots. The people who changed less while abroad have less adjusting to do when they return. Hard core, KTV-loving, Mandarin-speaking, culture-snob lǎowàis (p.s. – more power to ya) will probably be in for a harder time when they try to re-adjust back home. The upshot is that if you were flexible enough to adjust to China, then you are flexible enough to re-adjust back home whether you feel like it or not.
There are several things you can do to ease the stress of re-adjustment:
Related Posts:
A PhD psychoanalyst from the USA profiles the typical Chinese female. First time I’ve come across anything like this:
Not being a psychoanalyst myself, I have no idea if this stuff is worth it or not, but it’s definitely interesting. Also Dating Etiquette, Relationships and Sex in China.
It’s from a good China living and teaching resource site I just discovered called Middle Kingdom Life (also a blog), which looks great aside from their goofy “dragon” image (Chinese “dragons” aren’t actually dragons; they’re a combination of several different animals — probably a consolidation of tribal totems — and they don’t have wings or breathe fire).
A nostalgic song by 老狼 (“old wolf”) about growing apart after college.
(If, in an enlightened paroxysm of hegemonic benevolence, They are still blocking YouTube, you should be able to see the video here (youku) or here (tudou), or just listen to the mp3 below.)
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The university years are like a window of relative freedom for the Mainlanders who get there. Before university millions sacrifice their childhoods in preparation for the national college entrance exam. After university they have to build a career that can eventually support their parents, grandparents, and child’s education. But in college all they have to do is go to class and do homework (work-study is much less common), so it’s a time to relax and have fun. This song is abut how the pressures of post-college life can strain even the closest relationships from the college days.
Download: ShuiZaiWoShangPuDeXiongDi.pdf (lyrics & guitar chords with pinyin/English cheatsheet).
歌词 / gēcí / Lyrics
[Verse 1:]
睡在我上铺的兄弟 / shuì zài wǒ shàng pù de xiōngdì
Brother who sleeps in my top bunk
无声无息的你 / wúshēng wú xī de nǐ
You’re silent and uncommunicative
你曾经问我的那些问题 / nǐ céngjīng wèn wǒde nàxiē wèntí
Those questions you used to ask me
如今再没人问起 / rújīn zài méirén wèn qǐ
Now no one asks
分给我烟抽的兄弟 / fēn gěi wǒ yān chōu de xiōngdì
Brother who shared my cigarettes
分给我快乐的往昔 / fēn gěi wǒ kuàilè de wǎngxī
In the past sharing my happiness
你总是猜不对我手里的硬币 / nǐ zǒngshì cāi búduì wǒ shǒu lǐ de yìngbì
You always guessed wrong the coin in my hand
摇摇头说这太神秘 / yáoyáotóu shuō zhè tài shénmì
Shaking your head saying this is too mysterious
[Chorus:]
你来的信写的越来越客气 / nǐ lái de xìn xiě de yuèláiyuè kèqì
Your letters that come are written more and more politely
关于爱情你只字不提 / guānyú àiqíng nǐ zhǐ zì bù tí
You don’t write about love
你说你现在有很多的朋友 / nǐ shuō nǐ xiànzài yǒu hěnduō de péngyou
You say you have a lot of friends now
却再也不为那些事忧愁 / què zàiyěbù wèi nàxiē shì yōuchóu
but you don’t bother about those matters anymore
[Verse 2:]
睡在我上铺的兄弟 / shuì zài wǒ shàng pù de xiōngdì
Brother who sleeps in my top bunk
睡在我寂寞的回忆 / shuì zài wǒ jìmò de huíyì
Sleeping in my lonely memories
那日子里你总说起的女孩 / nà rìzi lǐ nǐ zǒng shuō qǐ de nǚhái
In those days the girl you always talked about
是否送了你她的发带 / shìfǒu sòng le nǐ tāde fàdài
Whether or not she gave you her hairband
你说你每当回头看夕阳 红 / nǐ shuō nǐ měidāng huí tóu kàn xīyáng hóng
You said whenever you turn to look at the red sunset
每当你又听到晚钟 / měidāng nǐ yòu tīng dào wǎn zhōng
Whenever you hear the evening temple bell
从前的点点滴滴会涌起 / cóngqián de diǎn diǎn dī dī huì yǒng qǐ
Every detail from before will well up…
在你来不及难过的心里 / zài nǐ láibùjí nánguò de xīnli
…in your not-enough-time-to-feel-sad heart
[instrumental break]
[Chorus:]
你来的信写的越来越客气 / nǐ lái de xìn xiě de yuèláiyuè kèqì
Your letters that come are written more and more politely
关于爱情你只字不提 / guānyú àiqíng nǐ zhǐ zì bù tí
You don’t write about love
你说你现在有很多的朋友 / nǐ shuō nǐ xiànzài yǒu hěnduō de péngyou
You say you have a lot of friends now
却再也不为那些事忧愁 / què zàiyěbù wèi nàxiē shì yōuchóu
and don’t bother about those matters anymore
你问我几时能一起回去 / nǐ wèn wǒ jǐshí néng yīqǐ huíqu
You ask me when can we go back together
看看我们的宿舍我们的过去 / kànkàn wǒmende sùshè wǒmende guòqu
To have a look at our dorm and our past
你刻在墙上的字依然清析 / nǐ kè zài qiáng shàng de zì yīrán qīng xī
The words you carved on the wall are still distinct
从那时侯起就没有人能擦去 / cóng nàshí hóu qǐ jiù méiyǒu rén néng cā qù
From that time on no one’s been able to erase it
[End:]
睡在我上铺的兄弟 / shuì zài wǒ shàng pù de xiōngdì
Brother who sleeps in my top bunk
睡在我寂寞的回忆 / shuì zài wǒ jìmò de huíyì
Sleeping in my lonely memories
你曾经问我的那些问题 / nǐ céngjīng wèn wǒde nàxiē wèntí
Those questions you used to ask me
如今再没人问起 / rújīn zài méirén wèn qǐ
Now no one asks
分给我烟抽的兄弟 / fēn gěi wǒ yān chōu de xiōngdì
Brother who shared my cigarettes
分给我快乐的往昔 / fēn gěi wǒ kuàilè de wǎngxī
In the past sharing my happiness
你曾经问我的那些问题 / nǐ céngjīng wèn wǒde nàxiē wèntí
Those questions you used to ask me
如今再没人问起 / rújīn zài méirén wèn qǐ
Now no one asks
如今再没人问起 / rújīn zài méirén wèn qǐ
Now no one asks
如今再没人问起 / rújīn zài méirén wèn qǐ
Now no one asks
I haven’t picked the next song yet. Any requests?
More for your karaoke repertoire:
We both write, but Jessica only writes when I bribe her. See all of her posts here.
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
 |  |  | ||||||
Back to: Gallery list
Back to: Gallery list
Back to: Gallery list
Click the "[+/-]" to show/hide the gallery list for each year.
Pronounced: sān sú
Means: The "Three Vulgarities" refers to things officially deemed vulgar (庸俗 yōngsú), low (低俗 dīsú), or pandering (媚俗 mèisú) in the ongoing anti-vulgarity censorship campaign that was launched in late July. English translations of the three vulgarities differ; see here and here to compare dictionary entries.
- 2010/08/11
China in 2013 -- a dystopian novel skewers "the China model of development"
The China Beat provides a helpful summary of a dystopian novel critical of the way things are in China: "The novel can be read ... as a realistic presentation of the shocking darkness behind the dazzling economic miracle created by the Chinese model. It also proposes that China’s younger generations suffer from the consequences of collective amnesia and historical half-truths... The book can also be read ... as an allegory of the modern nation-state. Taking China as a case study, by questioning the morality and political legitimacy of the Chinese model of development, the novel is intended to lead us to the potential catastrophes that a modern nation-state may bring about if it is out of its people’s control."
- 2010/07/28
Air pollution update & links (it's getting worse)
The Ministry of Environmental Protection acknowledged on Monday that the first half of 2010 had the worst air quality since 2005.
The good doctor in Beijing recently conducted a new air pollution survey around the city, comparing indoor and outdoor pollution, and the effects of things like air purifiers.
There's also an air pollution Q&A with another doctor in Beijing about the actual effects on healthy people and when and where to exercise.
- 2010/07/27
NPR series: "New Believers - a religious revolution in China"
NPR has an on-going series on the apparent rise of religious belief in China.
- 2010/07/24
Canada:
China:
Taiwan:
The States:
Brazil:
UK:
RSS
