Update: Physical Setting- Pollution Comparison

Last Semester, I commented on the relationship between Xi'an's physical setting and its air quality issues. However, I did not post a photo highlighting this phenomena. So, below are two photos taken from a footbridge near my house.



Notice the Qin Ling mountains in the background are visible on a day with good air quality while even some of the foreground buildings fade away on a bad air quality day.

The Elephant in the Room

As my Chinese language skills become more refined and complex, a new tactic for improvement has emerged- talking to strangers in the numerous late night establishments open in Xi'an. In many ways this is the counterpart to my formal morning classes, where I get to use the new words and structures I've learned in a practical and applied way. I also get an inroad into the psyche and culture of the modern Chinese. Last week, as I was sitting at a table of 6 Chinese men and women playing dice games and chatting about our likes and dislikes, one of the men at the table asked me if I liked the movie American Pie. I told him that when I was a teenager I watched it quite a bit because the topic of the movie was teenage boys looking for sex in the confusing world of high school. When I mentioned the word, sex, he immediately told me that they do not talk about sex and that it was impolite to even mention the topic of the movie he brought up and clearly liked. I told him that this was the truth and to leave out the most common thread unifying the movie takes all of the meaning away. He said it doesn't matter, sex just isn't talked about.

This conversation is emblematic of the contradictions inherent in modern Chinese society. Sex is a taboo, a dirty little secret to be kept in the privacy of one's home, not a part of public discussion. While at the same time, sex is also a central part of public policy. With the One Child Policy, China as a county exerts

the most influence on the personal sex lives of its citizens and with good reason. Unchecked population growth in the already largest country in the world would be destabilising to say the least. To address this issue, condom usage is also promoted by the government. Underneath the city wall is a public park that is a popular place among young Chinese couples. All along the footpaths are public service advertisements encouraging the couples to use condoms in order to avoid disease and pregnancy. This is certainlya proactive approach to addressing the fundamental issue of population. Sex, for both reproduction and pleasure seeking, after all is a central component of the human experience. It is impossible to repress.

At the other end of the spectrum of are the dichotomies of pornography and prostitution in China. Both pornography and prostitution are illegal in China, however the level of acceptability varies greatly. In China, the government takes active steps to block the availability of Internet pornography. In one fell swoop in 2007, the government blocked over 30,000 pornographic websites from access. Although their ability to fully exclude the most popular usage of the Internet remains to be see. There are no sexual magazines, or videos, and the idea of a “sex shop” are almost virtually nonexistent most places in China. Prostitution is also illegal but the attitude is much more permissive. Prostitution is available at all levels of society ranging from street side “hair salons” to high end live-in mistresses with all you could imagine in between. At the high end, often married men with money will finance the entire lifestyle of a young woman for the opportunity to come knocking on her door when ever he wants. The term for these women is er nai, which means second milk. I have even been told that some extremely wealthy and powerful Chinese men will house their er nai in the United States and that there is even a town in Los Angeles that has a large concentration of them. Massage parlors, karaoke places, and some bars also provide sex for sale. However, despite their clearly obvious purposes and their illegality, as long as they do their business in private, brothels are allowed to operate with little or no interference.

Hospitals for sexual and reproductive health also abound. To address the fact the the topic is of some embarrassment and is difficult for many to talk about, hospitals have aggressive advertising campaigns. Toilet paper is not provided at most places of business, and thus it is the job of the customer to come prepared. One reproductive health hospital has taken to printing its messages as well as its prices on free packets of tissues. I almost always take them because they are convenient and free but I never actually took out a dictionary and read the “menu” until a few days ago. The standard rate for an abortion is 50 yuan ($7) and contraceptive pills are 40 yuan ($5.50). Also available are a variety of cosmetic surgeries. The cost of “returning virginity” is 200 yuan ($28) while the cost of a “vagina narrowing” is 400 yuan ($57). Also available for men are circumcision, erectile dysfunction medicine, and fertility drugs. However none of the prices are listed on the male side of the tissue package. The main users of these facilities are sex workers. So, it may seem that even though sex is not a topic of discussion amongst anyone considering themselves respectable. It is clearly the elephant in the room that no one is talking about.

Back to the East

Welcome back to Silk Road East, my personal blog about all thing's Xi'an, China, and Me. I hope that you enjoy the new selections and don't forget to browse through the old if you haven't had a chance to read them all. My first two weeks back in Xi'an have been full of spontaneous and wonderful experience and I would like to share some of them with you. So with out further ado the newest entry in Silk Road East....

Travel for many is a passion. Changing places and faces brings the color and vibrancy to life that pushes us to discover and explore what is just beyond the horizon. For me, traveling to China provides a sense of newness that is reminiscent of a child's perception of the world. Everything is outside the realm of prior experience, thus allowing you to through out all previous assumption and soak up simply what "is."

Now that I have returned to Xi'an, I still feel this sense of wonder but I am now in a place that I am familiar with. I have a life here complete with friends, an apartment, a long list of great restaurants and markets that I frequent. But perhaps, the most thrilling feeling is knowing enough of the language to feel comfortable going to new places by myself. Without a basic knowledge of the language it is easy to feel separate from your surroundings and that isolation can be one of the toughest parts of being here. But now, the gateway has been opened into the lives of Chinese people. This trip, I arrived in Xi'an greeted by a snow storm and it turned what can be a drab city into a place of subtle beauty. I decided to spent the day walking around to the place I spend my free time and see them in this new way.

In my first few days here, I was lucky enough to see Xi'an in the snow and my day out walking the snow dusted streets and parks is very much emblematic of how I've become comfortable with life here. As, I strolled on the banks of the central lake at Lian Hu park snapping pictures of the snow topped pagodas when a snow ball landed behind me. I turned to find three little girls laughing and hiding behind some tables. I told them I was a baseball player who can throw very fast and that they might not want to take me on. Their response, a volley of snowballs. I put my camera in my backpack made a few snowballs a begun the fight. Upon seeing this a whole field of kids on a snow day decided to join in the fight again the foreigner. I retreated to the top of a big rock, dodging the snowballs from about 15 kids. I took up my post and rained down snowballs on them all the while using my umbrella as a shield. After about 5 minutes or so they realized what I meant when I said I was a baseball player and gradually retreated out of my throwing range. I truly was the king of the mountain.

Life is unexpected and going to a new place makes that fact all the more obvious. This is one of the greatest gifts that my experiences in China have given me because it has allowed me to see the world again as a child does- to take a chance, step out into the unknown, and find out what is on the other side of the horizon.

Markets as Mirrors

As my semester in Xi’an comes to an end and I am about to return home for the holiday, it is time to recall what I’ve learned from being here and what my daily life has been about. I’ve spent the vast majority of my time learning the Chinese language because it is truly the key to understanding the life and times of the Chinese people. However, my life outside the classroom has been equally instructive. The opportunity to use what I’ve learned and pick up more as I go has primarily been the domain of the market. Part practical and part passion, the markets of Xi’an have been my second classroom. The buying, selling, and haggling of the market is a part of my everyday life. It can be said that China is just one big marketplace where everything imaginable is bought and sold. It’s true and just as China has many strata of people, the farmer, the laborer, the businessman, and the bureaucrat to name a few; so are the ways and means of shopping stratified. From the sidewalk to the flea market and from the Wal-Mart to the department store and everywhere in between- commerce defines the lives and life of the city.
Modern China is teeming with energy. On its streets and alleyways there is an electricity in the air. It comes from the ever-moving mish-mash of people and sound, struggle and joy, constantly to be negotiated and renegotiated at the whim of time’s changes. It is a hustle; life here is one never-ending lesson in how to hustle. The primary agent’s of this lesson are the street merchants, peddling their bicycles and pushing their carts in every part of the city. They sell everything on the street and much of China’s vivaciousness comes from the freewheeling and spontaneous ability to but anything at anything at anyplace. Food, street food, is the backbone of this style of commerce. From kabobs to candy, fresh fruit, bread, dumplings, stinky tofu, popcorn, backed potatoes, noodle bowls, and nuts to name a few. The variety is dizzying and the price is rock bottom, perfect for the on the go lifestyle. At night some street food stands will put up small tables and stools turning the sidewalk into a makeshift restaurant. On the market streets the alley is shared space, a common living room for merchant and customer alike. But that is just the beginning.

In many ways the streets are a market unto themselves. Posters, pets, socks, cell phones, DVDs, pirated CDs, and not just these. In the constant drive to stake out a living by undercutting the price of more permanent stores, the cities street vendors breath life into the lower classes of society because without these street vendor much would be out of reach. That’s not to say that even the richest can’t enjoy the humblest of street food. However, in the never ending price war that is capitalism, most street goods sellers are participating in an illegal venture. Some street sales are allowed with a permit but the volume of street vendors makes their business hard to stop. But when the police do arrive, I have seen stampedes of street vendors running- goods in hand.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are the luxury supermarkets and department stores. Catering to the wealthy strata of the population, these places and often western in appearance, housing international goods, and sparkling clean. In many ways when one walks into these places they are entering a whole new world defined by a whole new set of attributes, separate from those that quickly come to mind when thinking about China. In contrast to life on the outside, these places are quiet, ordered, clean, new and luxurious. The floors sparkle, the employees always smile, and the customers make way for one another and line up. At the Metro, a German owned mega mart similar to Costco, all one's foreign craving can be satisfied. French wine, German pickles, American beer, Greek olives, goat cheese, salami, Belgian chocolate, and even avocados! To a Chinese customer, these ingredients are a sign of refinement just as they are in the West.

Not only are the goods inside a sign of change but the fact that the Metro is primarily accessed by personal automobile. It’s location is too remote from high density residential areas for walk up customers to enter, A membership card also stifles the average Chinese person from entering. But exclusivity is one of the things you pay for when you go to one of these places. The prices are a bit higher, they are harder to get to, and sometimes entrance requires an added price but sometimes, if one can afford it, it is worth it to step out of the masses of a moment.
In the middle of these two poles is what would be best translated as a flea market. Many small vendors each with a hole in the wall store, congregated together in one massive amalgamation of goods and services, sometimes unified by common products sometimes not. This is the way the vast majority of Chinese go shopping. It is these places that make it seem like China is one never-ending shopping mall. The small size of each store gives a few major benefits for buyer and seller alike. The buyer can go from shop to shop looking for the best price for similar goods. The seller keeps costs down by limiting inventory and rental costs. The Bai Hui flea market focuses its goods on young adult consumers. Clothes, shoes, and accessories dominate the fist level while electronics DVDs, musical instruments, and sporting goods are on the second level. Here you can also pickup a snack, get a haircut, or even a tattoo! In others the association is even more lose with luggage and fish being sold side by side. And still others sell identical products side by side. At the tea market on culture street, dozens of tea stalls are set up side by side selling almost exactly the same teas. Here, the tea ceremonies provided by each shop make up for the identical nature of the product since each stall can only fit one customer at a time. I’ve also seen electronics markets, animal markets, electric bicycle markets, and construction supply markets. This style of commerce, which features many small vendors as opposed to the single large vendor characteristic of the US, fits in with China’s needs as a country. Labor is certainly in no shortage and this allows many people to make a lifting off of life’s necessities and luxuries. Also because here are so many sellers this system actually conforms better to the tenets of capitalism than our trend toward big box mega stores.
One other market style is the market street and it has two major forms. One is very similar to a farmer’s market. The other is an amalgamation of similar stores but instead of being housed under a common roof they share the same street. Sometimes these two are merged to create a bazaar like market street. This style is typified by the Muslim street, Hui Min Jie. Hui Min Jie is the shopping street that surrounds the Great Mosque of Xi’an, one of the four oldest in China. In the past, it was one of the centers of long distance trade and many craftsmen set up shop here. It is one of the best areas In Xi’an to by cultural goods like painting, silk, tea, and nick-nacks as well as knock off western apparel. The street also has many restaurant and snack shops that feature local specialties like persimmon cakes. The style of this alleyway marketplace has perhaps the longest history of any of the aforementioned styles. It blends all aspects of life together and its atmosphere is lively and exciting. Places like these have weathered many changes and I have hope they will survive through the road expansions, high-rise constructions, and growing car culture. Like most things in China there are endless variations between all of these market styles. Each exists to cater to a different kind of Chinese person, a testament to China’s diversity. It is in this way that markets are a mirror to society not just mere places of commerce

The Mid-Autumn Festival

I wake up and moonbeams play around my bed



Glittering like morning frost to my wondering eyes



Upwards the glorious moon I raise my head



Then lay me down and thoughts of home arise



These words written by the famous poet Li Bai during the Tang Dynasty to describe his feelings of loneliness and homesickness during the Autumn season. This poem is the mantra of the Chinese Mid-Autumn- a festival that is in many ways similar to Thanksgiving. It is a time for family to come together, to share a meal, and to reconnect. China is a vast country and many people both in the past and the present have looked to this holiday as a moment of homecoming.

In the West this festival is known as the Moon festival because the day of the festival coincides with the day in the lunar calender in which the moon is the most full. The deep mythology surrounding the holiday is also centered around the moon. First, Li Bai's poem uses the moon as a common reference shared by all of the places on earth. Basking in the glow of the moonlight, staring up at the sky, one can imagine that they are home looking at the same scene. This sentiment is also embedded into Chinese mythology. For one, the moon is that place that the aforementioned Consort Yang went after her death to wait for her emperor Xuanzang. She also took a rabbit with her to stave of her loneliness and that is why the face of the moon can look like either a rabbit or a woman's face to the Chinese mind. Also connected to the moon is the moon cake. A doughy, filling-stuffed cake is pressed with auspicious symbols and eaten under moonlight. The fillings range from rose, to watermelon seed, and even grass (some good, some not so good).This homemade mooncake is filled with rose, walnuts, and sesame. In addition to the cakes many round fruits are also shared as gifts since the shape is similar to the moon. The roundness also represents the unity of the family.

The Mid-Autumn festival is a moment of family gathering that is gaining more and more importance as Chinese society adapts into a highly mobile, industrialized, consumer society. For both rich and poor, Chinese family's are changing. Buying a train ticket at this time of year is especially hard because of the massive number of migrant workers who flood China's train stations looking to return home. In the southern mega city of Guangzhou, which is home to many export oriented businesses and a large portion of China's 200 million + migrant workers, between 68,000 and 70,000 passengers a day flow through its major train station. I recently had the opportunity to engage some mid-level energy bureaucrats in a discussion about Chinese cultural change. They were mostly male, between the ages of 30 and 60, both rural and urban, and party members. I asked them about how and why China's family structure is changing and they gave me a few answers. First is the one child policy, this is of course going to affect the traditional family structure because it is limiting the size of the extended family. The Chinese have a term for the often self centered and spoiled only child that is the result of this policy- little emperors and princesses.

Second was industrialization. Industrialization affects the family two fold. One is that is pushes urbanization and two is that changes the fundamental working unit for value production from the family to the individual. Most of the bureaucrats thought that China's young people were much more individualistic than their older counterparts and more concerned with money. Third, was that the family was not changing that much. Family is still very important to the Chinese people. Remember that the Chinese have a long history of ancestor worship and that China is a country where children are the social security system. Many families still live close to their parents and use grandparents as the primarily child care provider. Still it is hard to ignore the changes that the average Chinese family is going through in the wake of China's massive economic reorientation. This makes family holidays like the Mid-Autumn festival all the more important as China looks to hold onto its roots as it reaches for the sky.

For me, now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, I too feel that sense of distance from my home so eloquently stated in Li Bai's poem. China is certainly not the US and it is easy to feel alone in a place so far away from the familiar. It makes me thankful for the technologies that bring to you my thoughts and feelings on this blog and allow me to call home when the timing is right. I would also like to thank you for reading and commenting on my life here in China it brings me back home and reminds me that I am part of a network of family and friends that transcends our individualistic world. And that for me is the true meaning of these holidays.

Long Lost Club Photos

In the theme of nightlife, I was asked to include some photos from inside one of Xi'an's nightclubs. So in order to placate these demands  I went camera in hand to one of Xi'an's most popular nightclubs, Club Salsa. Don't let the name fool you there was no Salsa music being played, just extremely loud house techno.  Without further ado, Club Salsa......

 

    The Bar at Club Salsa w/ flash   And without flash

                       

This way to the Bathroom.....

Dance China style...

     

                       

The future is here!

So You Think You're Punk Rock.....

Last night I found myself with a unique opportunity; the opportunity to see an underground punk rock show and to view first hand China's counter-culture. I expected to find some watered down version of the Ramones or an grating high-pitched scream fest that would inevitably drive me out the door. Now in my day I have been to quite a few punk shows with mixed results. The best provide an energetic atmosphere that makes you want to go out of control and the worst leave you standing stupefied at the awful sound that's assaulting your eardrums.


So, I entered the cave themed nightclub "Before Sunset" with a diverse cadre of foreigners who hailed from Germany, Italy, Slovenia, France, and of course the good ole' US of A to find a packed house of black clad Chinese punk rockers. The headliner of the night was a Beijing Ska band named SKO but the highlight of my night was a SoCal inspired pop punk band that brought me right back to my high school days. I must say that they knew the in's-and-outs of SoCal pop punk better than I thought a foreigner ever could. The MxPx shirt on the bass player gave me a hint that Chinese kids aren't exactly ignorant to non-mainstream American culture. Here is a video for added emphasis

All of this really brought me back to thinking about how far reaching American culture really is. It isn't just mainstream American culture that is adopted worldwide but all strata and variation of American lifestyle. In American eyes, America seems isolated from the rest of the world; surrounded by oceans and hostile to immigaration or foriegn influence. Punk music is often an angry response to this feeling of isolation and in many ways in the US it is a maginalized and obscure prospective. I know many punks feel the urge to reject American culture without realizing that they are very much a part of it. The sense of alienation amongst youth born into a complex and frightening world is common and America's youth have a great opportunity to express this feeling and be heard. You may not think that your country of 300 million is listening to you but a world of 6 billion is. The world is listening.

And it isn't just punk rock and metal but hip-hop culture has a profound influence as well. The youth of the world seems to pay more attention to Ameica's hip-hop videos than it does to the inner-workings of its politics. In the Bai Hui flea market there are numerous stores selling G Unit, LRG, Sean John, Phat Pharm, and other clothes targeted at America's black youth. I always have to chuckle when I see a skinny little Chinese kid in the overly baggy jeans with a G-U on each butt check. I think that one of the least understood facts within the American black community is the shear scope of their global influence. Most of China's nightclubs actually look like the ones in hip-hop videos. America's cultural diversity is unique and it is imparitive especially for its marginalized groups to understand their place as cultural leaders in the world.

As for the Punk rock concert I went to, it was a blast. Not only were the Chinese punks familiar with American punk music they also were knew the mosh pit. Jumping, pushing, and whiling out of control the pit was an energetic frenzy. I felt like I was in awash in a sea of Chinese punks but they could not push me down. Just as the thought of invincibility entered into my mind a kid jumped backwards off the stage and right into my face. I felt my nose stream with blood but nothing was broken. After hundreds of punk shows in my life the first to draw blood was in China. Alas, I had a good time, China is certainly fertile ground for punk rock.