Just a few China myths for you, courtesy of the New Yorker…

My favorite?

“The Internet might be censored but it can never be rolled back in China”

and

“China is a land of no siblings.” (People always ask about that one).

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/evanosnos/2009/12/top-ten-china-myths-of-2009.html#ixzz0ZrkhjSiB

Pollution was something that I thought about far more in China than I do here in Canada. A lot of that was on a simple day-to-day level – when I hacked up suspicious black things and suffered from constant eye infections. Or checking the pollution ratings each day and seeing the reports of a “blue sky day” when the pollution was so thick I would have to turn on my bike light in the middle of the day to find my way home.

On a broader level, I found that I also thought about the bigger issue so much more. What was the cost of development? Was clean-up even possible? What would happen say, 10, 20, 30 years down the line? How could the infrastructure support caring for people who would suffer from the medical effects of pollution later on?

Click here or on the picture above to see some photos of the pollution in China that… I hesitate to use a word to describe them because nothing seems to fit.  Over the past week or so I keep coming back to them to flip through them again and again. They are incredible.

The photos were taken by Chinese photographer Lu Gang (卢广) who won the $30,000 W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography for his documentary project, “Pollution in China.”

In many ways, the media here is still very young and developing in China, as compared to North America. Some of my work here involves editing stories written by Chinese reporters who, I must say, have slightly different “rules” to play by than the ones that were drilled into my head at journalism school.

First off – plagiarism. It’s absolutely rampant here and honestly, there is complete acceptance amongst my bosses here that it takes place. The other week, a reporter (who generally struggles quite seriously with English) handed me a story that began, “A look of satisfaction played on the trade official’s face as he reeled off statistics recently from a ministry report about China’s booming commerce with Africa.”

Um, full stop. I knew immediately something was strange and typed the phrase into Google. Turns out, Howard French of the New York Times wrote that very same lead on a story back in 2004. As I read on, it turned out the entire story, in fact, had been plagiarized.

I was horrified.

I met with the reporter, who then flatly denied that she plagiarized anything. An incredibly uncomfortable situation then took place where I explained that she deserved to be fired. Insert some tears and a boss who said that it was fine just to tell her not to do it again and I left rather frustrated and sad, to be honest.

One of the other problems is the language thing. Now, I know that writing in a foreign language would be a great challenge and I’m sure if I wrote in either French or German, my work would be littered with grammatical errors. That being said, here is another example of what someone handed into me the other week.

“Before occurrence of the international financial crisis the American, European and Japanese car companies were working for sollowing the markets movement through sequestration and blocking networks that were known by cars manufacturing industry during recent years. The storm of money market came to shake these entities on their crowns, so many have fallen and the rest of these giant entities who continued became unstable like wearing pendulum, which search on whom stopping its random swinging.”

Errrr…. come again?

As I hopped on my bike yesterday to head towards home, I couldn’t understand why everyone was riding in such an insane fashion.

Now, riding a bike here in the beginning was a harrowing, white knuckle experience. I’m trying to come up with an analogy, so let’s say, picture the entire city of Montreal on a bike – drunk – and that’s kinda what Beijing feels like to me most of the time. People are constantly heading the wrong way, cutting you off, stopping in the dead center of the road, swerving into you, smashing into you from behind. Nothing at this point surprises me anymore and yet I’ve managed to find this strange zen feeling when I ride. Whereas I used to mutter “Don’t die, don’t die,” during each ride, I now morph into this strange daze where I think of sunshine, lollipops and rainbows.

But yesterday a storm was coming. The clouds crackled and it appears every cyclist went crazy. If there’s another thing people hate here, it’s getting wet. Most people whipped out their ponchos. People pedalled the fastest I have ever seen. One woman in a slightly ridiculous pair of three inch red heels (trust me, heels were NOT made for cycling in) decided to open her umbrella, while riding her bike, while TALKING on her cell phone and smoking a cigarette. Mad skills.

I, on the other hand, the good rainy B.C. native, simply accepted my lot in life and prepared to get wet. I was also about 11 km away from home and realized there was no way I was going to make it even close.

And boy, did it rain. Huge claps of thunder, driving rain so hard I could hardly see. I was soaked in about 45 seconds and by the time I made it home, there were puddles about four inches deep across the courtyard.

I got in the elevator dripping water everywhere and there was one of my elderly women neighbours. She looked at me – horrified – and promptly went into a lecture about how I was going to get sick and die.

“Where is your poncho?” she said. “You need a poncho.”

I told her i didn’t have one and she made this face like I had said, “I don’t have pants.”

She then made me get off on her floor. I waited, somewhat unsure of what she was doing. She came back and thrust two things in my hand. One, some strange tea. And two, a purple poncho.

She then scolded me a bit more and let me go on my way.

And despite that fact that I now feel like a 5-year-old, it made me laugh pretty darn hard.

And now I have a poncho.

We laughed pretty hard.

They big questions being… does this person want an English tutor, a prostitute or a pay-as-you-go friend? And what’s with the age range of 10 – 35?

Well, in the interest of figuring it out, I actually went at 7:30 a.m. yesterday only to be STOOD up by the creepy person who left me a note.

My feelings are strangely hurt. Not hurt enough to write them an email, mind you.

As much as I enjoy the food here there are things I miss.

Cheese.

Oh cheeeeese. I love you so. My cheese experience in Uganda was rather lacking. My cheese experience in China has been slightly better. There is a large selection here of cheese if you go to the fancy import stores, but you have to unfortunately pay an arm and leg to satisfy any craving.

Simply put, eating cheese here breaks the bank.

So for a long time, I haven’t really eaten much cheese. For a while, I ate the strange “Beijing cheese” that tasted slightly like really really cheap American mozarella – you know, the kind that comes in weird blocks and doesn’t quite melt? Yeah. That one.

But then about a month ago I picked up another cheese. This time, an extra old vintage cheddar from New Zealand called “Mainland Cheese.” I had serious doubts. Like, I don’t really know much about New Zealand cheese but it didn’t really fill me with huge amounts of confidence. It was also too cheap, 28 RMB (about $4 USD) a package where most decent cheese around here run more like 70-90 RMB.

But then I tried it.

Smitten!

It’s far better than most Canadian cheddars I’ve tried, particularly for the price. It’s quite sharp, very tasty and has a great texture. Lovely and crumbly and delicious, oh my!

And today when I went to buy my cheese, I found that my new favorite cheese was on sale, 2 for 1. I jumped up and down. I did a small dance. And I would tell you where to go to buy said cheese, if you happened to be in Beijing, but there’s no point. I bought it all.

Yup. 8 packages of cheese now sit in my fridge at $2 a piece. I’m thinking it’ll keep me happy until Christmas. Fine, maybe Halloween.

Signed,

The Cheese loving traveller who is now in bliss

P.S. Pizza dough is now rising on the counter and I just made up a batch of pesto. The cheese will go to good use for dinner tonight.

I am one of the only foreigners in the building of about 4000 people. So needless to say, I’m well known around the compound. I’m the giant who comes from “jiānádà” (Canada).

In the beginning they (the three elderly women and two older men) used to just stare at me and to be honest, I felt somewhat nervous of their stares. But over time, as my Mandarin slowly improved, we started to chat more. Over time, we started to laugh more and now, every day when I come home, I grin when I see them.

Most days, the women tell me they like my hair or eyes. They like my pale white skin. The men, on the other hand, LOVE my bike. They often motion to it and talk about it. Today, as I was wheeling the bike up the ramp (I also love that there’s a ramp as well as stairs) one of the men came over to it and started inspecting the bike. He gave me a thumbs up sign. He asked me a question, and I wasn’t quite sure what he meant but judging by his gestures, he wanted to try out my bike. Seriously, the man is like 80 years old. I smiled. I was totally going to let him try my bike.

The women started laughing and laughing and we all watched as he rolled the bike onto the flat surface, shakily got on and then tried the accelerator (electric bike). He lurched forward, we all gasped and I close my eyes (silently begging that no, I would not be the one responsible for killing the 80-year-old man on my electric bicycle).

And then in a moment he was off, racing around the courtyard while the neighbors laughed and cheered. Round and round and round he went, his funny round glasses slipping down his nose in the heat. He laughed and laughed and we laughed and laughed.

And it was marvelous.

I’m finally at this brilliant point where I’m starting to understand what people say to me. It’s a fabulous feeling, even if I can’t say much back at the moment besides a whole host of random words and phrases (such as “sir, can I have 10 dumplings?” which is very useful I’ll have you know).

It also helps with the paranoia that comes when you keep thinking that everyone is talking about you. Well. They aren’t always talking about you. Most of the time though. Like when they’re whispering and staring at you, they are talking about you. The good news is that it is often good things.

“Mommy, her hair!” said a little girl the other day. “Pretty.”

Teenage boys on the other hand make fun of me. But that’s cool. Teenage boys make fun of every single person in every country around the whole world. It’s  a universal truth. Teenage boys = strange awkward mutants.

I got off the subway the other day in an area where I never see foreigners and I saw a blonde girl.

And she scared me.

So basically, I scare myself? I see my reflection in the mirror sometimes and I swear to god, I almost jump.

It has certainly chilled me out though. If I’m startled when I see blonde people, I figure it’s cool for everyone else to be as well.

One of the things I most looked forward to, when coming here, was the food. HOT DAMN there is some amazing food here. Honestly, I would say my failure rate of food (which, I think in North America is at least 50 per cent) is about 10 per cent here. Ninety per cent of the food is really, really, really good.

The food is cheap, it’s fresh, it’s served fast but occasionally there are scary things in it that I do not, under any circumstances, ever want to talk about.

But then there was the rat incident. I found a tiny ribcage in what was supposed to be a dish of pork (liars!!!!!! Pigs don’t have wee ribcages the size of a apricot. I’m still trying to figure out what animal it came from. The only one I can think of, again and again, yes, is rat. RAT.

Rat?

Guinea pig? Mouse? A bonzai-sized bunny?

I’m rooting for the bunny.

I pulled it out, the sauce still dripping from the rib cage. I inspected it. I gagged a bit. Just a little though. And I ran away.

But I didn’t barf. I thought that was a plus.

The worst thing? Guess what I thought as I left the restaurant?

“That rat sauce was pretty good.”

I know, I know. What is WRONG with me?

A “level 3″ stare…

Fine, fine, it’s not a game. I couldn’t come up with a title. I’m lame.

At any rate, I do want to talk about staring. Now, I am stared at here. Is this a surprise? Not really, considering my height and the way I look. I’m stared at here on a level that I have never experienced outside of China, including the entire continent of Africa. Yes. Okay, folks, I know I’m a giant viking but the staring has gotten to a level that is it rather hilarious.

Fine, fine, I live in a nation of people who stare. Really? Is it a big deal. Nawww… not really. But it does amuse me.

Okay, now, the levels.

1) The standard gawk: Pretty much what I consider the “normal” stare. I would say it runs an average of 5 seconds and people look away when I look them in the eye. Often performed on the subway or at the bus stop.

2) The street stop gawk: far more common in West Beijing near where I work, the street stop means that someone literally stops in their tracks when they see you and spends a minimum of TEN, I repeat, TEN seconds staring at you.

3) The kiddie almost cry stare: usually performed by children who don’t often see foreigners. Children are so disturbed by your presence that they stare at you like you’re the monster under the bed. And… wait for it… the face crumple… Oh wait. That’s right. You are the monster under the bed.

3) The bicycle dismount: Usually performed by elderly women and my absolute favourite, albeit rare. This happens when someone is riding along, they see me, and they decide my existence here is such a shock that it requires a stop, a complete bicycle dismount and at least a GOOD 30 second stare. That’s a minimum, mind you. This really is the top tier level of staring, and I generally get excited when it happens, almost like I have won a prize.

Okay, bye bye, I’m going out to get stared at.