A Valenwhat? Explaining Valentine's Day to a Chinese Friend (repost)

I'm starting a petition to ban Valentine's Day in China.  Judah and I had to wait 6 hours (gross exaggeration) to buy two red roses for our girls yesterday.  It was much better when us foreigners were the only ones who felt the pressure of blowing it and all of the Chinese people stood back, stared and laughed.  Now the flower shops are packed with frightened Chinese men who dare not return home empty handed.  Sorry about that China.

Anyway - here's a fun repost from last year.

Sweet Valentines made by my Valentine Sweety for her
Sweet Valentine Sweety (that's me)

Like most other Western holidays, Valentine's Day has landed in the Middle Kingdom and planted it's flag of sticky sweet, chocolate covered commercialism.  I was excited this year, one because I didn't forget it and two because my wife and I were actually getting to go on a real date.  After a lovely afternoon foot rub (one of the perks of living in China) and a quite pricy dinner at one of the city's finest Italian restaurants, I found myself feeling woefully inadequate and riddled with guilt (which everyone knows is the underlying conspiracy behind Valentine's Day that fuels the sticky sweet, chocolate covered commercialism).  In the five minutes that it took us to find a taxi after leaving the restaurant we saw 37,000 young Chinese women carrying massive, gaudy bouquets of multi-colored roses decorated with sparkling sequins and glitter.  Each stomped with a catwalk confidence and was followed by a pompous young man grinning with the pride that only comes when you get it just right.  My wife, on the other hand, had very clean, relaxed feet and a full stomach, neither of which could be seen by the crowd's of flower toting, love struck gloaters who were now laughing, pointing and high-fiving each other because the Western guy (who should know something about Valentine's Day) didn't even get his wife the massive, shiny bouquet.  I was completely assured that China understands Valentine's Day. 

However, explaining the word Valentine is not so easy.
My Chinese friend asked me a simple question.  "What is Valentine's Day?"
"Well, it's a special day for . . . umm "
She helped me out, "It's just for people who love each other, right?" 
"Yes.  It's a day for people who love each other." 
"So what does it mean, 'Will you be my Valentine?'"
I had never considered this to be a confusing topic but the more I tried to explain the more I learned otherwise.  "Will you be my Valentine is kind of like saying I want you to be my girlfriend or my boyfriend but I would still say it to my wife who is already my wife so obviously she doesn't have to be my boyfriend or girlfriend because she already is . . . my girlfriend . . . or was . . . before she was my wife . . .  a long time ago, but she's still my girlfriend, it's just that we're married now.  And I can give my daughter some chocolate and a card, which I would also call a Valentine, that says "will you be my Valentine?" because I love her but obviously not in the same way that I love my wife but it's still ok for me to give her a Valentine and be her Valentine.  Also, she will take Valentines to her first grade class, that say 'will you be my Valentine?' and give them to all of her friends but not because she wants to profess her love for them or ask them to actually be her Valentine because she is not allowed to have a Valentine (in the boyfriend sense) until she is 28 . . . but she can have Valentine's in the card and chocolate sense now, so in that respect a Valentine is just a nice thing to share with friends.  So it's not only for people who are in love but it's still a special holiday . . . for people . . . who are in love . . . or love each other . . . but not always . . . sometimes . . . kind of.

I was glad to be able to clear that up for her.  After further confusing discussions with others on the same subject it was my Valentine (the one with the clean feet, full stomach and lack of roses) who cleared up the dilemma of defining a Valentine. 

What is a Valentine? 

"It's a noun." Enough said.  

"Hey Fatty" and other Chinese Greetings

After five weeks in America it was good to see our friends in China.  Until they called me fat.

Last week I was walking home and ran into Lotus.  She's our friend who runs the vegetable shop in our apartment complex.  She's also the one who said my son (who is half African-American) looks better when he's white (click here) and organized a community event to help me find a cure for my diarrhea (click here).  Lotus is genuinely one of the hardest working and sweetest people I have ever met.  From early morning to mid evening, seven days a week, she spends her time organizing her little shop and delivering fresh oranges and broccoli to families in the more than 20 buildings in our complex (who are too busy or too cold to walk to her well organized little shop).  Always with a smile, usually with a laugh and generally with a bit of free fruit if there are children involved.

Ironically, when I saw her she was coming from our apartment.  She had dropped off our oranges and broccoli and my wife had given her the small gift that she had thought to buy for her little boy in the States.  Her smile was bigger than usual and she stopped her bike to chat.  

"Ohhh Jerry, it's so good to see you.  Welcome to come home!"

Me, "Hey Lotus! Good to see you too.  We've missed you."

"Yes, I just go to see your wife. I'm so thankful for your gift."

I wasn't actually aware that we had given her a gift but obviously we had since she had it in her hand even though I couldn't make out what it was.  "mmm. Oh yeah . . . we're happy to give you that ummm . . . so how are you? Did you have a good Spring Festival?

"Oh yes, it was very good.  How about America?"

"Very good.  We had a wonderful time."

"Good! I'm so happy to see you. And I'm so happy for the gift.  My son will love it!"

Again with the gift that I was still clueless about.  "Ohhh gooood  . . . all little boys need one . . . of those . . . things . . . that we got for him . . . Ok see you later."

"Ok see you! You look a little fat!"

Caught off guard for the second time in a 20 second conversation I stumbled around in my brain for something to say.  I gave an awkward laugh and said the only thing I could think of  . . . "Yeah well I've been in America.  Zai Jian."

"Zai Jian"

As I walked away I realized that I had just fed the Chinese stereotype that all Americans are fat which is obviously not true.  That's like saying all Chinese people have black hair.  Oh.  Wait.

I'm afraid that I may have contributed to the gross misconception that there is something in American oxygen that immediately causes people to reproduce fat cells or even worse that Americans shovel food into their faces, like barnyard animals, straight from a feed trough.  I could imagine that she had a mental picture of restaurants with multiple tables the length of the room overflowing with every conceivable fattening food sopped in butter and gravy with massive Americans piling plate after plate full showing little or no restraint.  I felt it was too late to run after her and scream, "Noooo, you're only thinking of a midwestern Chinese buffet!"  I also thought it might be a weak argument to tell her we have other restaurants . . . with steak . . . the size of my torso."

China has much less of a weight problem than most Western countries and consequently less of a stigma.  No one wants to be fat but it doesn't seem to be socially obsessed over from Kindergarten on here.  In the West we build a massive, albeit contradictory, piece of our culture around fatness.  Greasy fast food and high intensity workouts are both equally marketable products and feed off of each other (no pun intended).  "Here . . . eat this.  Now do a supercrunch.  That'll be fifty dollars."

We publicly label being overweight as the absolute worst possible state of being.  We make jokes about it (your Momma's so fat).  We make movies about it (Shallow Hal and most Eddie Murphy movies) where the moral of the story is always, "it matters what's on the inside" but the first 98% of the story is fat jokes, (or fat momma jokes).  We laugh about it.  We complain about it. We even acknowledge that its a problem (Supersize Me) BUT time itself comes to a screeching halt when it gets personal.  Children, in an effort to be cruel write poems (fatty, fatty boombaladdy) but once you reach the 6th grade you should know that it is physically dangerous to draw attention to anyone's heavy-setedness, big-bonedness or even their pleasingly plumpedness.  And by the time your married you should know that the only acceptable response to, "do these jeans make me look fat?" is to fake a heart attack.

In China they just call you fat.  It's not an insult.  It's not a compliment.  It's a statement.  However, we don't generally hear what people say until we filter it through who we are.  China can be a challenge for the Westerner whose greatest, unspoken pain is being bigger than they want to be and I've heard some shocking stories from people who have come face to face with a perceived blunt response to their weight (which I dare not post on the internet without permission).  If you live in China and you're big, you're different than the norm and they'll tell you.  If you live in America and you're big, you're not quite so different and no one will ever say a word . . . until you leave the room . . . and then they'll make a fat joke.

So which way is better?  To say "you're fat" and think nothing of it OR to not say, "you're fat" and think, "fatty, fatty boombaladdy"?  I personally prefer the second one (especially when I'm the boombaladdy) but that could be because I'm an American . . . and pleasingly plump.

Anyone got a fat in China story that your not afraid to post on the internet?  Go for it.     

I Think I Might Be Amish

I could totally pull off the Amish look, don't you think?

I felt strangely amish today . . . in a bizarre, science fiction, alternate universe, I live in China where there are no Amish people kind of way.  From now on I will be blogging by candlelight.

I grew up in a part of America that we call the midwest.  Actually, if you look at a map, most of the "midwest" is geographically closer to the East coast but no one in that particular part of the country prefers to say they live in the Middle East . . . so we call it the midwest.

Midwestern values are simple.  Sit up straight, don't cuss in front of your mother, buy American and don't stare at people.  Like all values though, there are exceptions.  For example as important as it is to buy American products (we start riots over this) it is acceptable to buy imports if and only if said imports are 1. cheaper . . .  2. better quality . . . or 3. closer to where you live.  Hence Wal-Mart . . . and Toyota  . . . and everything else.

The two exceptions to the "no staring" rule are as simple as the value itself.  

1. Staring is allowed if the person or persons being stared at are obviously unaware that the staring is taking place.  It's a little known fact that Midwesterners have distinctively over developed neck muscles and a keen sense of peripheral vision.  The neck muscles are developed by repeated "glance aways" which is the proper response when one is caught staring.  The peripheral vision allows them to intuitively sense when it is all clear to turn back and commence staring.

2.  It is acceptable to stare if the person or persons being stared at are the exact combination of really strange AND not a threat to your physical well being.  Ironically "strange" can encompass a broad range of traditionally non-midwestern characteristics but non-threatening is pretty cut and dried.  For example, large tattoos on a pasty white teenager with orange hair and multiple face piercings leaning against the wall outside of the mall smoking a Virginia Slim cigarette.  Ok to stare.  Large tattoos on a huge, bearded man with a pony tail and black leather jacket that is embroidered with a human skull and the words "Kill em' all, let God sort em' out" straddling a Harley Davidson, smoking a Marlboro Red . . . Look away. Determining who fits the exception and who doesn't is complex and confusing to the outsider but for the midwesterner it is second nature.

The Amish fit perfectly into exception number 2. 

They are a fascinating group of people who migrated to the States from Europe in the 18th century and have been led by their religious convictions to live the simple life, free of modern technology such as electricity, automobiles, telephones and iPads.  They also embrace very simplistic, non-commercial fashion guidelines similar to that of Ma, Pa and Laura from Little House on the Prairie (all of which makes them really strange . . . at least in the spying eyes of the common mid-westerner).  They are famous for outstanding craftsmanship, building barns in one day, long beards and non-violent, pacifist living (which makes them non-threatening and even a little bit cuddly).

Prime for staring at.

When I was a kid we would occasionally drive through "Amish country".  There was a giddiness that came with the trip.  My mother, who was generally the prime enforcer of the "no staring" rule, would transform into some kind of Amish marketing rep.  "We're in Amish country Jerry . . . better look out the window we might see one . . . I wonder how many we'll see today".  Now that I have kids I realize that this was just a sneaky parent trick to buy a few minutes of peace and quiet but it worked like a charm, every time.  I would sit with my face pressed against the window waiting for the adrenaline rush of a big black horse and buggy.  Just being in proximity where I knew we MIGHT see a real, live Amish person was electric.  In my mind I drifted to a strange place, dreaming of how awesome it would be to live the Amish life and knowing full well that I wouldn't like it one bit.

"There's one!  There's one!" It's like we were whale watching.

Dad would slow down and as we passed I would wave as excitedly as if they had been Mickey and Minnie themselves.  They waved back with less enthusiasm than I would have expected from the Disney's but still . . . they waved.

Several times on our recent trip to the States we had an occasion to drive through the Amish communities and the magic lives on.  The moment I would see the big yellow horse and buggy sign I would have the kids perched on their lookout.  "There's one! There's one!"  One day we counted eight.  Good times.

I live in a Chinese community that is also home to a lot of foreigners (like me).  While we come from all over the world most of the foreigners around here share two characteristics.  We are really strange and generally non threatening.  Walking home today I saw a mother grab her daughter and playfully whisper something into her ear.  The little girl laughed and looked at me.

It wasn't hard to figure out what the mother was saying . . . "There's one! There's one!"  

Nothing new.  That happens everywhere we go.  It's the price of being strange and non-threatening but I wonder if it's different around our apartment where so many the foreigners live.  Do Chinese parents elbow their kids and say, "hey we're in foreigner country, pay attention you might see one"? Do kids keep track of how many they see?  Do they dream about what it would be like to live the life of a foreigner and know that they would never like it?

As they passed the little girl smiled and gave me the all too familiar, "HALLO!" I smiled back and with the enthusiasm of an Amish Mickey Mouse said, "HALLO!"

Sometimes its good to see myself through the eyes that I use to look at the rest of the world.  I'm so Amish.