Kunming, Week 4

This week was, of all things, oddly Jew-centered. It really has happened, at least for me, that the parts of my identity that I rarely really think about back home are brought into sharp relief here, and it becomes very clear the extent to which I fit or do not fit those tags. This weekend was pretty surreal on a number of levels.

First the week, however. You basically get used to the work load after a while, and this week had relatively less work than last week, so that was nice. I've been listening to the Best Show on WFMU obsessively while I do my three or four odd hours of homework a night, to the point where I am approaching the dangerous cultish love of the show I had during the summer. In any case, it definitely helps with homesickness. Some days, however, I just have no energy or will to participate in discussions, and I often find it hard to pay attention. Additionally, I think I have been having problems with the altitude here (Kunming, at an elevation of 6,207 feet, is at a higher altitude than Denver), since I've been taking two hours naps on a relatively frequent basis, even when I get eight hours of sleep a night. It doesn't help that I've pretty much switched entirely to tea - I have no illusions, and I know that when I get back, I'll be back to my six hours of sleep, half a pot of coffee a day, regular old self. This week, in our area studies class, we saw the Frank Capra film, Lost Horizon. He's had better ones. The acting is terrible (of that storied histrionic brand of bad acting) and the film, with the tension you would expect from 2 hours spent in paradise, crawls along. Some of the script is too good ("If she were to leave Shangri-La, she would revert to her real age" "That's weird" "She taught me a lot of things last night!"). Overall, however, skip it.

At this point, I'm having a blast with my language partner, and having really good, really interesting conversations. Although speaking in Mandarin is often frustrating, it's great when it works, and I can joke around in Mandarin, or at least pick up my package. She's loosened up a bit this week, and took me out to dinner on Wednesday, and didn't rush to our assigned topics on Friday. This week, I used my new Japanese roommate as a pretext to ask her about her views on the Japanese. The response was not unexpected but still kind of scary; she (and really, most Chinese) feel that the Japanese, as a race, are naturally aggressive and domineering, and they are far from forgiven for the atrocities of WWII. As I've mentioned before, I think Americans should be careful about telling the Chinese how they should feel about Japan; we have no understanding of the tremendous suffering of the Chinese during WWII, a uniquely brutal and extended occupation that has still not been apologized. At the same time, and as I told her, it is never a good idea for human societies to remain in a state of undying enmity; I brought up the example of the Jews and the Germans (to which she responded, she had seen Schindler's List, and thought that the Jews were permitted never to forgive) and, more pointedly, the fact that my grandfather had fought the Chinese in the Korean War, and yet I was here. Additionally, there is an inherent hypocrisy (not to mention a lack of self-examination on the part of the Chinese, many of whom where engaged in collaboration) in condemning the Japanese as a race. My language partner, for example, used as an example of the natural tendencies of the Japanese towards rapacity and just plain oddness, a few episodes from the tourist mecca of Lijiang, where Japanese people, at one point, had stripped entire forests of rare trees of their medicinal bark, and stripped entire meadows of their medicinal grass. I did not point out, but was certainly thinking, that this rapacity is by no means limited to the Japanese, and, in fact, the chief bogeyman of many environmentalists are Cantonese who will basically eat anything that moves, no matter how endangered.

The overt racism/racial insensitivity of the Han Chinese is truly bracing. When I asked my language partner at dinner about her attitudes to the Dai people she grew up with in Xishuangbanna, she said, pretty much straight out, that many of the Dai just do not like to read or study, are lazy and so are only fit to work in the fields. But didn't she have Dai friends, I asked? Of course, she said, but you have to understand, some Dai are really just like Han. According to anthropological readings I've had on this topic, this is a pretty typical Han attitude: the ethnic minorities are capable of civilization, but they must remove all markers of ethnic difference and act like the Han. Additionally, this weekend, I talked to a Chinese man, and the topic of Purim being this weekend came up, and led to me mentioning that I was Jewish. "Oh, the Jews are the smartest people," he said, "and they have the most money. You must have a lot of money." I just kind of laughed it off, because it clearly wasn't malicious, but it's amazing to me how the Chinese will not hesitate to share the stereotypes they hold about your particular ethnic ground, and it also amazes me that the Chinese hold stereotypes regarding races they've never come into substantial contact with (namely, the Jews and the Blacks).

My language partner and I ate dinner this Wednesday at a Korean restaurant that was basically someone's house. At dinner, she mentioned that her university had a study abroad program in America. I asked where, and she said, as my heart sank, Oklahoma. I actually literally said, I'm not going to lie to you, that place is not interesting. In a badge of pride, she got diarrhea after that meal, but my iron stomach, once again, was unscathed. It's also kind of shocking the frequency and openness with which us on the program talk about our digestive problems. We pretty much always know when somebody has diarrhea.

Another great language experience has been talking with my Japanese roommate. Since, as I noted in my previous post, we have pretty much zero language overlap, we have to use Chinese. If we aren't able to use Chinese, we aren't able to talk, period. He's really a pretty nice guy, and we've gone out to dinner a couple of times this week. At one point, when we were getting chuangkao (bbq muslim kebabs), he ordered a strange purple meat on a stick. I asked the vendor what it was, and figured out that it was duck liver. So I told it to my roommate, who didn't understand, and then described it as foie gras, and then said, with a laugh, that I could say what it was in three languages, but unfortunately not in Japanese. We mostly manage to communicate however, although sometimes, when I realize that it would take more effort to explain something mundane than is worthwhile, I kind of just drop out.

I've spent a lot of time this week at an American run cafe, Salvador's, because they have reasonably fast internet. It's been an odd experience, because the place is dominated by foreigners and is the only place I have been in China which feels exactly like an American cafe, not a strange approximation of it. Sometimes, when I go to Salvador's, a very American feeling place, surrounded by foreigners gathered from all corners of the globe and westernized or attempting to westernize Chinese, I feel like I've stepped into a real life Rick's Cafe Americain. Which, btw, is an intensified version of the very particular way Kunming feels. It is very much a cultural contact zone, not only in the sense that it is filled with ethnic minorities and is very much peripherally Chinese, but also in that it is filled with foreigners, on their way to other destinations, or just hanging around for God knows what reason. It is a pretty neat feeling, unlike anything I've ever experienced, being in one of these cultural transition points, and makes for a very interesting urban flavor.

As I said, this was an oddly Jew-centered week, mostly connected to my experience last night. It is the Purim season, and, since my professors were interested in seeing it, the whole program went out to a nightclub a bunch of Israelis had rented out to celebrate the holiday. In the first place, I realized that it was the first Purim I had ever really celebrated, and it was in China of all places. Secondly, it was the first time that I had ever been in contact with a society of Israelis (outside of the occasional relatives) and felt really connected to them, although, at the same time, I was very aware of the Israeli difference. The bottom line is that it was bizarre to celebrate Purim in China, dressing up and shouting "hayom, hayom" and "L'chaim" in a country that basically has no conception of that culture. Additionally, there were so many Chinese there, and I really wonder why they went, what was their incentive. Were they just looking for a good party, or were they curious about the festival, or were they looking to meet Westerners, or what?

After that, I went to a nuts Chinese nightclub, pretty much American style, but filled with drunk Chinese. As I've mentioned before, whenever the Chinese attempt modernity, it's kind of jarring, and I realize at the club that what it is is that there's no middle ground. The Chinese don't develop their own version of contemporary culture, but seem to basically adopt the culture of the West lock, stock and barrel. In any case, the club was a blast. Definitely a highlight for me: having a beer bought for me by a drunk Chinese girl, who later pulled me on a platform to dance with her. What can I say, the kid's still got it.

Today, I spent a lovely Sunday checking out the Tang-era pavilions near the center of the city. It strikes me that it was the first really old thing I've seen here (Beijing is pretty much no older than the Ming, Shanghai dates back to the 19th century). I had forgotten the lovely simplicity of Tang art and architecture, and it was nice to see a city sight in a fairly normal manner, just spending a few hours in a park, instead of rushing around like a tourist. Kunming, btw, has a really nice layout, with many wide streets and pedestrian plazas with cafes. I walked past a very interesting real estate development with houses made to resemble traditional Chinese houses on the outside but Western condos on the inside, and also, two young Chinese people on a city gate engaging in some of the most aggressive PDA I have ever seen, here or elsewhere.

Bout time I get some noodles and chuangkao, eat quickly and start studying. Got a lot of work for tomorrow. Talk to you next week.