Saturday, December 22, 2007

Christmas in Chengdu

Because we went back to the UK in November for my Dad’s 70th birthday celebration, we decided to stay here over Christmas, and possibly travel somewhere in China. It’s a good time of year to travel because it's not a holiday here, so you don't get the enormous crowds of determined pleasure-seekers that you see during the May, October and New Year holidays. As it turns out, however, our passports are all going to be at the police station for renewal of our residence visas, so we won’t even be doing that. But we have never had Christmas here before as a family (we draw a veil over the first year here, when Isaac and I went back to the UK, but Ethan stayed because of work obligations and ended up spending two weeks in hospital due to a severe allergic reaction), so we have decided to make the best of it and create our own holiday atmosphere.

This isn’t so difficult in fact, because the Chinese are embracing Christmas as never before. I was aware of a definite increase in tinsel, fake snow and sparkly Santa faces strung up around the place every year. This stuff is all made in China, after all, so why shouldn’t some of it be sold here? And more and more people join in the local tradition for young people to gather in the main square downtown on Christmas Eve and have fun. Well what they actually do is smash each other over the head with long balloons, but why they do it is a mystery. It’s one of those things like a Mexican wave, that someone starts and everyone else just runs with. Xiao Long says you can’t walk 3 feet downtown without being assaulted by a complete stranger, usually painlessly but not always. She said that someone died in Tianfu Square on Christmas Eve last year, although she wasn’t sure what of. I suspect that a traffic accident is more likely to have been the cause than a balloon assault.

This trend is not going away, though, it has a life of it’s own. A young woman asked Ethan this week how he would be celebrating Christmas and he explained that it’s a day to be with the family, eat a large meal, open presents and play with the children. Then he asked how she would be celebrating. “Oh we celebrate the same way that you do in the west”, she said confidently, “by hitting each other with balloons.”

The misunderstandings about Christmas run deep. Xiao Long asked me last week if Christmas is our western version of the Chinese New Year. I said that it’s true it is our major holiday and it is followed by our new year celebration, but Christmas itself is a religious holiday. This was totally news to her. I felt that further explanations were called for, so I dug out a lift-the-flap nativity book that Sam’s Godmother sent him for his birthday, and went through it explaining the Christmas story in Chinese. I felt a bit like a missionary, which was a new experience, but I decided it was more cultural enlightenment than conversion. Xiao Long had heard of Christianity before I think, but not Jesus and she certainly hadn’t a clue that Christmas was his birthday. Certain elements of the story made sense to her however; she kept saying things like, “oh, so that’s why you put a star on top of the Christmas tree”, and “is that why you give gifts at Christmas?”

Later in the week her daughter Zeng Jing had to write up some notes about Christmas on her classroom notice-board, so I printed out a bunch of pages from a Chinese internet site, which explained every tradition in detail for a Chinese audience. (I’ll translate a few choice sentences later if I have the chance.) So now her family are pretty much the local experts on all things to do with Christmas. This has its downside for Xiao Long: Zeng Jing now wants them to actually celebrate Christmas and has been asking if she could have a Christmas stocking so Santa would bring her presents as well. After all, he is supposed to visit every girl and boy. I was given some red and white stockings in a store promotion so I said that I would prepare stockings for Zeng Jing and her two cousins.

In addition to feeling like a missionary I now also feel slightly guilty of increasing the spread of commercial Christmas. Seeing all of my preparations, Xiao Long and Xiao Zeng both went out and bought presents for the boys and gift-wrapped them to put under the tree. They only just brought presents for their birthdays and no doubt they will buy them again at Chinese New Year, and they are far too generous. Xiao Long spent 80 yuan on Isaac’s birthday present, which is about one-fifteenth of her monthly salary. If we spent the same percentage of our income on Zeng Jing she really would think that Santa had come to visit.

Xiao Long's family aren't the only ones paying more attention to Christmas; I can't speak for other parts of China but here in Chengdu, everyone seems to be catching on. A Tibetan friend invited us out for a Christmas meal this year instead of waiting until the Tibetan New Year as he usually does, and Ethan's colleagues dropped by on Christmas Eve with a bottle of wine and an enormous bouquet of flowers (after first making sure that we wouldn't be spending the evening carousing with balloons at Tianfu Square). It's the custom to send out text messages wishing your friends good fortune at Chinese holidays, but this year people sent them out for Christmas as well. They say things like, "may this Christmas tree bring you vitality, happiness, wealth, fortune and good luck", or "may your wallet be as full as Santa's bag of presents!"

Santa, provider of stuff, is definitely the leading light of commercial Christmas. At Isaac’s school holiday program there were 3 separate plays set in Lapland, featuring naughty elves and Father and Mrs. Christmas. It's an international school with children from many cultures so that’s fair enough, I’m not expecting them to put on a nativity play like the local Church of England primary. (If we wanted that we could pop down the road to the Chengdu International School, which has a very religious focus and asks parents to sign a statement pledging their child’s education to God.) All the same I did breathe a sigh of relief, after the parade of elves, when Isaac and the other children sang Silent Night. Up to that point if Xiao Long had been present she could have listened to the whole program and still been none the wiser about the reason for Christmas.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

The Neighbours

The first I knew of our new neighbours was when I rode up in the lift with Xiao Wang the water-delivery man and noticed that he was delivering cigarettes and soft drinks instead of water. Because the tap water here is not safe to drink everyone has a water cooler in their home, and when the barrel is empty, we call downstairs to the shop and order a new one. Xiao Wang spends his days shouldering water barrels, staggering across the compound and installing them in peoples’ flats. In our case this is especially difficult, as we put our water cooler 3 feet off the ground on top of an old filing cabinet to prevent Sam from flooding the place. Despite this he is always very cheerful and greets Sam and Isaac whenever he sees them outside. Sam calls him “water delivery uncle” (song shui shu-shu), which makes perfect sense in Chinese.

I had never seen Xiao Wang delivering anything else before, apart from some packets of instant noodles once for Xiao Long’s lunch. It seemed cheeky to have the guy run around with your cigarettes when the shop is only just downstairs, so I was extremely curious when he got out at our floor and rang the bell of the next-door flat. This flat had been empty since the family bought a penthouse on the top floor and moved upstairs, but I knew they were trying to find tenants and I was intrigued to find out who our new neighbours were. The door was answered by a young man with a shaggy hair cut and baggy trousers. The tv in the room behind him was turned up full volume and even after I had gone into our flat and closed the door, I could hear it as if it was in our sitting room. This was not a good sign. Even less good when it continued all day and late into the night, supplemented by the doorbell ringing on and off as other young men with shaggy haircuts came and went.

The next day I asked Xiao Long if she had noticed the new neighbours. “Ayo, they are a bunch of layabouts!” she exclaimed indignantly. “They sit around all day watching tv and smoking. What are they up to?” She had found out that there were 4 young men sharing the apartment, but only 1 or 2 of them appeared to have a key because several times a day one of them would hammer on the door or ring the bell repeatedly to be let in. The guys inside probably couldn’t hear because of the tv. Over the next few days Xiao Long kept me posted on what was going on. She was outraged by the appearance of several young women who went in and out at odd hours, but she was most annoyed by the tv noise, as were we. Ironically my friend Louise, who is thinking of buying a flat in this compound, had asked me just the week before whether we were bothered by noise from our neighbours. I had airily replied that we never heard anything, apart from the person upstairs who has a heavy tread going to bed late at night, and someone’s child who practices the piano, luckily fairly well, on weekend mornings. But I spoke too soon.

Xiao Long wondered if these young guys are operating a “tea house” in the flat. “You mean people come there to drink tea?” I asked incredulously. “Not just to drink tea,” she said, meaningfully, “opening a private tea house in your home is all the rage at the moment. You have 3 or 4 tables and people come to play mahjong or poker, mostly poker because the stakes are higher.” Comprehension dawned. “You mean people are gambling? Isn’t that illegal?” “Of course it is, but when has that stopped anybody?” Xiao Long told me that her husband’s older brother had invested in a one ninth share in a private tea house earlier this year and in the first month he made 30,000 yuan (about 20,000 pounds) from his share alone! The owners make their money by taking a cut of the winners’ earnings, which gives you an idea of how much money is changing hands. They provide tea and snacks and sometimes food as well and of course shoulder the risk of operating an illegal business, which probably involves pay-offs to the police. Even legal businesses have to deal with pay-offs. A friend of ours who runs a restaurant here in Chengdu was asked to pay some money to a government office and when he refused, he was told his business was creating a noise hazard and he would have to close unless he could get a written statement of approval from every resident on the street, which was lined with blocks of flats.

It seemed unlikely to me that the shaggy boys next door were running a gambling den in a respectable flat in Jinguan New City, but you never know. After a couple of days Xiao Long bumped into the new neighbour’s landlady in the lift and she asked her if we were bothered by the noise. Xiao Long let her have it, but this came as no surprise to the landlady. Apparently she had received complaints from all over the building. Even the people 2 floors above were bothered by the noise and she had already told the young men that they would either have to tone it down or leave the flat. A week later you wouldn’t even know they were there, except when one of them forgets his key. Perhaps they all found respectable jobs, or perhaps they are still in there all day, watching tv with the volume lowered. There has been no sign of any young women, let alone any potential gamblers. If they are running a “tea house”, business is very slow.

At the Mall

At the Mall.

25 November 2007

Ethan is away at the moment and I took the boys to the nearby mall at the weekend, to pick up a few things at the supermarket and spend a couple of hours at the soft play center there. The mall is only just down the road, about 10 minutes walk from our house and is a popular destination for shopping and leisure. In the evenings the square in front is filled with elderly couples ballroom dancing.

In the lift we were standing behind a young woman, probably about 20 years old. I noticed her because she was wearing a tightly-belted white woolen coat over a short white skirt, white knee high patent leather boots and a white knit cap. This is a fairly typical outfit for an afternoon’s shopping trip, dressing up is all the rage here. That same morning I saw a middle-aged woman leaving our compound wearing a full-length black mink coat and 4 inch silver stilletos. She was probably just going out for lunch, or an afternoon of Mah-jong. I suppose it's the same principle of conspicious consumption as the Mercedes and the BMWs in the car park: if you've made it, you want to make sure everyone knows.

I also noticed that the girl in white in the elevator at the mall was holding hands with a girlfriend, who was similarly dressed up. She was standing with her eyes closed, leaning her head on her friend’s shoulder. Watching them I realized this is a sight you would rarely see in a western country, but it is commonplace here. Unfortunately it does not mean that same-sex relationships are accepted in China. What it means is that physical displays of affection between men and women are still frowned on, but it is fine and dandy to be physically affectionate with friends of the same sex. So it is perfectly normal to see young girls holding hands or young men in army uniforms strolling around arm in arm, but it is less usual to see a couple canoodling in public. This is changing slowly: the ballroom dancing couples are more likely to be man and women nowadays, although the majority of them are still male couples and female couples, solemnly waltzing round the plaza.

You do see couples engaged in other forms of affection, however. On this same day at the mall I noticed a young couple sitting on a bench, the girl busily cleaning out her boyfriend’s ears with a Q-tip! It sounds revolting, but nobody turned a hair. Don’t forget it is traditional to grow your little finger nail long for this very purpose. But if you haven’t done so, there are plenty of alternatives: at the parks and tea houses people come around with ear cleaning kits and offer to clean out your ears for you.

The physical affection thing changes somewhat with age, more with men than with women. You don’t tend to see middle-aged men holding hands, unless they are very drunk. But I do have one glorious image that is lodged in my mind like a Cartier-Bresson photograph. Outside this same mall one day, I saw two middle-aged men in dusty, paint-spattered clothes, probably migrant construction workers, running at full tilt down the road, hand in hand. Perhaps they were late for something or running to catch a lift, who knows, but they were laughing as they ran and their faces were a picture of pure joy. I wish I had had a camera at that moment.

Good Language

15 October 2007

After a week away with the family, speaking only English, Sam’s language abilities have taken a sudden leap forward. Overnight it seemed, he was able to speak in sentences and he keeps surprising me with a remark or a phrase I had no idea he could say, such as “Sam Isaac sharing cookies”or “Sam putting milk on cereal”.

He has always been good at applying the words he knows to describe things he doesn’t know, such as “apple-juice” for all drinks and “cookie” for not only food items but any small, round things, e.g. “mama ear cookie” for earring. But recently he has extended this to concepts he doesn’t have words for. I first noticed in Bangkok airport, when we walked past a 20 foot statue of a demon with a blue body and a fierce expression. Sam ran to catch up with me saying “Sam hurting”, and I thought he probably meant he was scared but wasn’t sure. But later on we passed a whole tableau of similar blue demons and he was quite clear than that they were “hurting shu-shu” (uncles). Last night he was sitting at the table and suddenly started crying, although not very convincingly. When I asked him what was wrong, he pointed at a green plastic dragon of Isaacs that was sitting on the table. “Hurting toy!” he exclaimed, burying his face in my shirt. Not being biased at all I think it is brilliant of him to apply the concept of physical hurt to mental hurt. Soon enough he will learn the word “scared” and stop using “hurting” but I’ll miss it when he does, just as I already miss him saying “oo-ay” for where and “bummy” instead of “bunny”.

Sam has also, just in the past month, drawn a clear distinction between Chinese and English. Before, he would mix up words from the two languages in the same sentence. He would say “hello shu-shu” for example, or he would speak to me in Chinese and to Xiao Long in English. He doesn’t do this anymore. Now he will say something to me in English, then turn to Xiao Long and say the same sentence to her, but in Chinese. And if he doesn’t know a word in Chinese, or English, he doesn’t usually use the word from the other language. He knows how to say tea in English but when Xiao Long asked him what Mummy was drinking he thought about it and said “Sam bu zhidao” (Sam doesn’t know). To double-check I asked him in English what I was drinking and he said “Mama drinking hot tea.” He knows who he should speak to in which language and he rarely makes mistakes.