Zhujiajiao - another water town
Tourist knickknacks
Chinese street band
Xitang - a small water town outside Shanghai
Mission Impossible 3 was filmed here, and they are very proud
Xitang-style zongzi
Ayi is the word for aunt. It is also used as a term of respect for older women. It is also used for the women who clean houses in China.
Ayis are older women who are paid to do housework. They can cook, do your laundry, get your mail, pay your bills, and clean your entire house for you. Some ayis go to houses once or twice a week. The pay rate for these women is around 10-20 kuai per hour. That’s about $1.50-$3.00 per hour. Some ayis live in their employers’ houses in a spare room. They are more like nannies. I once tutored for a Taiwanese family who had 4 live-in ayis. I’ve also tutored for a family whose ayi was fired for stealing jewelry.
For expats and wealthy Chinese people, having an ayi means never, ever having to clean. If you speak Chinese, ayis love to give you advice and chat with you. They like to say: “You need to wear more clothing.” “Aren’t you cold?” “You’re going to catch a cold.” “You are sick because you have been eating too much hot.” “You should be wearing slippers.” “You need to stop smoking.” “You have a cough because you eat too much meat and too much spicy food.” “You’re Chinese is so good!” “You should eat rice with your salad.” “You got fatter but I think you look better this way.” “Don’t drink Coke. It’s bad for your health.” “You are too skinny. You need to eat more.”
VIP Club - imagine this plus 2,000 people playing dice
Chinese nightlife is quite different than American nightlife. The Chinese do not like dancing. They like sitting at tables and paying for expensive bottle service and being seen.
Chinese clubs in Shanghai reflect this cultural difference. The clubs have a very small dance floor if any at all. They are filled with tables and stools. If you don’t reserve a table at which to sit, there is no place for you to stand. Waiters, ayis sweeping the floor, security guards, and other club-goers will be bumping into you all night. You simply don’t matter if you haven’t bought an inflated bottle of black label.
Once at a table, Chinese people like to order their favorite type of whiskey – Johnny Walker and Chivas are popular choices. The waiters will bring pitchers with ice and several bottles of cold green tea. The whiskey, ice, and green tea is mixed in the pitcher and then served. Whiskey lovers everywhere scoff disgustedly. While drinking, Chinese people usually like to play the dice game featured in Pirates of the Caribbean 2. They will also be served a platter of watermelon triangles and cherry tomatoes.
The atmosphere of the clubs is incredibly loud and in-your-face. They are decorated to the max. There isn’t an inch of empty space on the walls. There are lights blinking and blinding you. The music the clubs play is almost exclusively top 40 pop and hip hop, and every song is played for about 30 seconds.
Another common sight at Chinese clubs is go-go dancers. Both boy and girl dancers will get up on stage with coordinated outfits and do choreographed or sexy spontaneous dancing. Sometimes they lip-synch to the music; sometimes they sing. Sometimes they are only wearing a thong.
A domestic population that exceeds 1 billion people has several noteworthy effects on Chinese society.
1. The Chinese are INCREDIBLY fast at getting construction done. They simply have the man power to work around the clock with an abundance of workers. Here in Shanghai, when there was only one month left until Expo and nobody thought they would get it done, the Chinese miraculously pulled it off. My roommate arrived in Shanghai 2.5 years ago. At that time there were 4 subway lines. Today there are 13. Currently, Los Angeles plans on extending one of its subway lines from Korea Town to Santa Monica. That project is estimated to be completed in 20 years. Today is the two-year anniversary of the catastrophic earthquake in Sichuan province that killed 90,000 people and left 5 million people without housing. Since that time, the Chinese have built 250,000 new residential buildings in that area. What has the U.S. done for New Orleans thus far?
2. It’s dog eat dog. It’s every man for himself here in China. The large population creates an intense competition between people. That is evident in the way people push their way onto the subway without waiting for people to get off first, young people rarely get up to give older people their seats, everyone, including little old ladies, will push and shove you on the street without saying ‘excuse me’ or ’sorry’, and there is a serious lack of standing in lines in favor of cutting in front of folks.
The competition has some benefits for consumers. Any vacuum that is found in the business market will be filled. Basically, if you are willing to pay money for something in China, you can get it. And you can get it delivered to your door. The Chinese ebay – taobao.com, sells everything from blue cheese to condoms to real live people. Delivery usually takes 1-2 days. If you want something mailed, you can call someone and they will come pick it up from your house or wherever you are, wrap or box it, and get it to the delivery address by the next day if the address is in China. We have a contact here that will deliver hard-to-find avocados to our door for 10 kuai each ($1.50) with no delivery charge. We know a person who will deliver copious amounts of ice to our door for the same price. Almost every restaurant has free delivery. McDonald’s has 24-hour delivery with a minimal charge. I have one friend who had her double cheeseburger meal delivered to the bar we were at.
3. Education. The education system in China is set up in such a way to crank out large numbers of students. Questions, creativity, and individuality are not valued. Students spend their entire academic careers studying and memorizing material for a test that is taken at the end of high school that will determine whether they can get into college. If they do not pass the test, they cannot escape a life of blue collar work. In addition, students that do not go to school in big cities are at a serious disadvantage to passing the test. Rural places do not attract good teachers so the education is worse. On top of that, I recently found out that Chinese people need a permit to live in Shanghai, and I’m assuming other large cities, which is expensive and difficult to obtain, and also another barrier to getting a quality education that would allow a student to pass this college-entrance exam.
If we were to compare the U.S. and China economically, I would say that what the U.S. has going for it is creativity and entrepreneurship. China has sheer man power.
In China, there is an abundance of Chinese people who have given themselves strange English names. I’m not sure if they don’t know what a normal English name is or they just find a word that sounds good or translates well from Chinese and use it for a name. Here is a list of the weirdest ones my friends and I have heard:
Men
Fox, Sword, Metal, Golden, Yoyo, Tennis, Running, Adidas, Fish, Snake, Aloho
Women
Rain, Cinderella, Hello Kitty, Ding Ding, Juju, Bobo, Ripple, Cleopatra, Apple, Cherry, Seven, Rainbow, Nanny, Little Punk
A few days ago I had the flu. My Chinese friend, CK called me. I told him I was sick and had a fever. He told me, “It’s because you have too much ‘hot’ in your body.”
The Chinese have a philosophy when it comes to food consumption that is very different than America’s conception of “healthy eating”. Chinese food therapy, as it is referred to on Wikipedia, is the delicate balance of yin and yang when eating. Yin foods are considered ‘cold’. Yang foods are considered ‘hot’. One should strive to not eat too much of either food. Hot and cold are not related to temperature. For instance, ice cream is considered hot.
This philosophy is a division of Chinese medicine and is used for the treatment of any ailment, although Chinese people try to maintain the balance at all times. If you have zits, a Chinese person will say you are eating too much hot. My friend’s Chinese mother tries to maintain the balance on a daily basis. If she is eating something hot, she will add vinegar, which is cold, to cool it down. There is a hairy crab season in China when it is very popular to eat hairy crabs. Chinese people always pair these crabs with Shaoxing wine because the crabs are a very cold food, and the hot Shaoxing wine balances that cold.
Wikipedia says, “As a generalization, Yang foods tend to be dense in food energy, especially energy from fat, while Yin foods tend to have high water content.” I really can’t tell the difference between hot and cold foods. For example a mango is hot, but an apple is cold. Lamb is hot; snake is cold. I tend to like hot foods more. Maybe they are tastier and fattier.
Another interesting thing I’ve heard about about Chinese food philosophy is the reasoning behind eating spicy food. The cuisines of the Sichuan and Hunan provinces are very spicy. Chinese people have told me that the reason Sichuanese and Hunanese people eat such spicy food is because these provinces have very wet climates. The dampness seeps into their bodies. They eat the spicy food to dry their bodies out. It another example of a yin yang balance.
Here are some examples of hot and cold foods:
Hot:
deep fried food, chilies, pineapple, cherry, lychee, black tea, squid, chicken, apricots, barley, grapes, olives, onion, walnut, celery
Cold:
watermelon, cantaloupe, green tea, bean curd, banana, duck, cucumber, eggplant, lettuce, mung beans, oranges