A Convenient Life

My current life involves skiing every morning while listening to the Economist, ChinesePod, audio books, or foreign policy lectures available on iTunes U. In the afternoons, I slug through one of the books on the State Department's recommended reading list for aspiring foreign service officers. Although my diet consists largely of Totino's Party Pizzas and chili spaghetti, it's an exceedingly comfortable life that I'm eking out.

However, as predicted by previous ski bums, I have become more picky about what days I really want to go out and ski. If there isn't any fresh fluff, why bother waking up early? Hence, I've written an extension to my alarm clock script to check the snow report first. Only if there's more than a threshold level (currently 3") of the good stuff, will my alarm sound. Otherwise, it's sweet dreams and a natural wake up some point later in the day.

Snow Report

#!/bin/bash -l
#Script to check snowfall at Vail and Beaver Creek.

snowpath=http://www.snow.com/rssfeeds/
snowfile=snowreports.aspx
#Threshold level in inches
threshold=3

analyze ()
{
#Find the relevant lines in the snow report
vail=$(grep "Vail Resort Snow Report" $snowfile)
bc=$(grep "Beaver Creek Resort Snow Report" $snowfile)

if [ ${vail:39:2} -gt $threshold ] || [ ${bc:47:2} -gt $threshold
then
#We got threshold snow level

if [ ${vail:39:2} -gt ${bc:47:2} ]
then
echo "Vail got more gnarly powder than BC so go ski at Vail! ${vail:39:9}"
else
echo "BC got more gnarly powder than Vail so go ski at BC! ${bc:47:9}"
fi
#Sound the alarm!
bash /home/david/bin/alarm
else
echo "No new snow :-("
fi
}

if [ -e $snowfile ]
then
echo "Removing old file."
rm $snowfile
fi

echo "Retrieving snow report."
wget $snowpath$snowfile -q

if [ -e $snowfile ]
#File retreived
then
echo "Report retrieved. Running analysis."
analyze
else
echo "Damn, there was a web error."
#Run the alarm anyway. The internet's probably out due too much snow on transmission lines!
bash /home/david/bin/alarm
fi

Alarm

#!/bin/sh -l
# Alarm that slowly ramps up music volume

# Make new playlist
find ~/Music/ -iname "*.mp3" -print > /home/david/playlist.m3u
find ~/Music/ -iname "*.ogg" -print >> /home/david/playlist.m3u

#save original volume
initMasterString=$(amixer cget numid=1 | grep '[0-9][0-9],[0-9][0-9]')
initPCMString=$(amixer cget numid=6 | grep '[0-9][0-9],[0-9][0-9]')

initMaster=${initMasterString:`expr index "$(amixer cget numid=1 | grep '[0-9][0-9],[0-9][0-9]')" ,`}
initPCM=${initPCMString:`expr index "$(amixer cget numid=6 | grep '[0-9][0-9],[0-9][0-9]')" ,`}
amixer -c 0 set Master,0 unmute>&waste.txt
echo "Initial Master: $initMaster"
echo "Initial PCM: $initPCM"
#set volume to initial
for (( volume = $initMaster; volume <= 31; volume++ )) do amixer -q cset numid=1 $volume done amixer -q cset numid=1 100% amixer -q cset numid=6 0 #load music player mplayer -ao alsa -shuffle -quiet -playlist /home/david/playlist.m3u >&alarmout.txt &

#ramp up volume
for (( volume = 0; volume <= 255; volume++ ))
do
amixer -q cset numid=6 $volume
#uncomment to display shit
#echo $volume
sleep .5s
done

#wait for user to wake up at loud volume
sleep 70s
if test -z $(pidof mplayer); then
#mplayer not running, user cancelled alarm
echo "Alarm cancelled by user."
else
#mplayer running, stop playing
killall mplayer
echo "Alarm timed out. No user input."
fi

#return volume to original value
amixer -q cset numid=1 $initMaster
amixer -q cset numid=6 $initPCM

Humor in a foreign language is difficult. Although I have a small advantage because of my goofy accent, there are a lot of things that I think will be funny that fail miserably. Sometimes I get lucky and the reverse happens, but not nearly as often. In an attempt to try to elicit laughs from people, I tried to learn a canned joke, but the responses were rather cold. I can sometimes get in a quip that my good friends who are used to my sense of humor will laugh at, but getting people I don't know to laugh can be quite a struggle. For a while I took to referring to myself as a “foreign devil,” but that eventually grew old. Luckily, I recently struck gold in Beijing. I call it my elevator joke because it works best in a crowded elevator. It's crude and rather unoriginal, but it gets the job done. Unfortunately it only works in quiet and crowded places.

“āiyōu, wǒ fàngpì le...bùhǎoyìsi.”
“Oopsies, I farted...excuse me.”

In a culture where saving face is valued more than almost anything and nobody talks to strangers, having somebody intentionally embarrass themselves is quite a shock. It's also great because the Chinese always try to be very stoic in public. Watching them try to hold back their laughter is a reward like no other.

As you may have noticed, there are a lot of things that get me fired up about China. Among these is the charge that America, as opposed to China, has rampant racial problems. As recent events in Massachusetts have shown, we still have some problems in the US that make it far from perfect. That being said, we are also one of, if not the, most racially diverse countries on the planet with relatively little geographical isolation. In contrast, here in Jiangsu province, the population is over 99% Han Chinese. It's hard to have racial problems when there's effectively one race. In the provinces where there is significant mixing of Han with one or more the “56 National Ethnic Groups,” things aren't quite as harmonious.

Albeit I've mostly been the beneficiary of what I perceive as rampant racial discrimination, that has been because people have assumed that I am one of the “good” foreigners. I took a stab at changing that when I was in Anhui with a student. There a young boy took quite an interest in what was probably the first foreigner he'd ever seen. Wondering what would happen, I introduced myself as from Japan. I've found that most Chinese people when asked will be quite willing to admit that they “hate” Japanese people. Undoubtedly the historical relationship between the two countries has been tumultuous at best. Whether this a valid reason to hate an entire nationality is a question I won't address. True to his heritage, after introducing myself as Japanese, the young boy told me (my student translating) “I hope when you walk down the street the police see you and arrest you!” Admittedly he may have been reacting to my ludicrous claim to being of Japanese descent, but I tend to think it more likely that to some extent he believed me. That doesn't ring of racial tolerance to me.

On my trip to Xinjiang, I traded my watch for a hat that's typical of what many of the minorities here wear with a man whose first sentence to me was “the Chinese are bad...very bad.” Having the hat gave me an opportunity to wear it in Changzhou. Although my complexion isn't quite as Central Asian as the actual minority that typically wears the hat, I'm told that I look close enough to confuse people. I had thought that it was only the obviously black or white foreigners who were shouted “lǎo waì!” (foreigner!) at. However, wearing my hat I repeatedly heard the call “xīn jiāng rén! (“Someone from Xinjiang!”) You'd have to go to a pretty remote place in the US to hear somebody doing something similar.

I've discussed the cold part of how Chinese people are similar to a thermos. Allow me now then to delve into the warm part, which like the boiling water that is incessantly poured into the thermoses, is quite warm indeed.

Although in China's recent history many foreigners were seen as 洋鬼子 (yàng guǐ zi - foreign devils) , the situation today is completely opposite. Foreigners, particularly ones who look different, are accorded an undue amount of respect and adoration. I presume that this comes from a combination of fascination with people who look different, the assumption (backed by a great deal of empirical evidence) that all foreigners are rich, a desire to practice English, and a longing to learn more about the world outside of China. This means that we foreigners are often immediately included in a Chinese person's inner circle of close friends and are hence receive the warm treatment, even from somebody whom we aren't well acquainted.

The warm treatment is worlds apart from the treatment received by all others. Benefits ranging from small favors to wildly expensive acts of hospitality make a Chinese person's inner circle a good place to be. In Shanghai, I was waiting for a cab with a Chinese friend. Another man who was waiting a little further up the road from us successfully hailed the first cab. My Chinese friend immediately went up to him and pointed to me, saying “Can you let us go first?” He immediately backed away and motioned me forward.

Another example is the way that the Chinese treat their close friends and family who have to go to the hospital. I initially thought that my students were just trying to cut class when they always went to the hospital in pairs. Do you really need a friend to go with you if just have a cold? However, when I visited the hospital to see Steve's wife, I understood why. I don't think there's a person in a Chinese hospital by themselves. Each patient that I saw always had at least one other person working with them acting as a nurse's aid. Whether this meant carrying the IV sack or helping the person go to the bathroom, somebody was there. When Ken had his own bout in the hospital, our advisor spent over 24 hours straight at his side. Spending days at time at the hospital wiping your friend's nether regions shows a kindness that I don't know if I'm capable of.

I can't count the number of times that I've been invited to banquets by a Chinese person. Whether visiting a student's family, being introduced to the university president, or simply visiting a new city, a banquet is certainly in order. Each banquet has been a feast, and often consists of competitive drinking, all paid for by whomever invited. One instance that stands out was when my father and I visited Kashgar. A Chinese literature professor here whom I've become friends with was raised in the largely Uighar city in western China, so I asked her if she might me able to recommend something to do. She gave me the phone number of an old classmate of hers with whom she hadn't spoken in 20 years. Although this particular classmate was too busy to go to dinner with us (although he did have just enough time to take a picture with us), he asked a colleague (subordinate?) to take us to dinner. I wasn't expecting anything fancy, until the taxi door opened outside of Quanjude, an extravagant Beijing roast duck restaurant. Along with the two translators whom we'd been assigned, we dined with the colleague, his wife, and another couple through at least 20 dishes of fancy Chinese cuisine for close to two hours. I estimate that the whole banquet cost at least 1,500元, not a paltry sum when my students expect their monthly salary to be 2,000元. As if that wasn't enough, we were also provided a four-star hotel, and a private car to the lake 100 km away we wanted to visit. All of this for a friend, of a friend whom the man hadn't seen in 20 years.

So while Ken and I often joke that Chinese people only think of themselves, this is only true in public where the other people aren't part of the inner circle. We have both been treated with wildly selfless behavior on numerous occasions, in contrast to a Japanese tourist whom I was talking with who said that he was appalled at how the Chinese behaved, describing them as “selfish” and “immoral.” Although it may be a slight mistranslation, his experience has been colored by the fact that he can't readily be identified as a foreigner. (He probably had an accent but most Chinese also speak Mandarin as a second language.) Like other tourists I've talked to who haven't received the inner circle treatment, he wasn't able to see past the cold and selfish public behavior.<

Delicious recently told me that Chinese people are like the 热水瓶 (thermoses) that every Chinese owns. They are "cold on the outside and warm on the inside." I couldn't agree more. Chinese culture is supposedly much less individualistic than Western culture, however, I've found a few examples where Western culture is much more community oriented than Chinese culture.

Chinese people don't like to put their bags on the floor at train stations. There's good reason for this, as Chinese people also don't mind spitting on the floor, discarding all sorts of trash on the floor, or occasionally allowing their young children to take care of business on the floor (a convenience afforded them by the ubiquitous 开裆裤 - or "split pants"). Since they don't do a lot to preserve the cleanliness of the floors, most people prefer to put their bags on the seats. It's not uncommon to see a crowded train waiting room with numerous people standing up as half of the seats are occupied by luggage. I've also seen a man napping across three seats as dozens of people stood silently around him. Wouldn't thinking of others in the community mean giving up the cleanliness of your bag, or a little sleep, so that the other people around you could grab a seat?

Littering is another problem in China. Although nearly all of the younger generation have been educated to not discard litter at random, and there are trashcans everywhere here, there are still a lot of people who litter. I recognize that this is mostly an educational matter, and most of the people littering came of age when they had more important things to worry about than the environment. I've made it my mission whenever I see somebody littering to try to as gently as possbile correct the situation by either noticeably grabbing the litter and throwing it in the nearest trash can (which is never far away) or handing it back to the person and saying "excuse me, I think you dropped this." I've heard the argument made that if nobody litters, then the street cleaners will be out of a job. However, I asked one at the Olympic Stadium in Beijing if she thought people should throw their trash in the rubbish bins or on the ground. Perhaps not realizing the threat to her job, she said she'd much prefer people use the trash cans. I would think that would be the collectivist behavior.

Probably the most infuriating is Chinese peoples' inability to properly queue. It's one thing when somebody tries to cut to the front of the train station ticket window (resulting in a shout of 排队! from me), but the real demonstration of individualistic behavior comes on the roads. As nearly everything in this country is under construction, there are often times when a road will be closed down to one lane. In the US, this would mean neatly forming a single-file line behind the closure and then orderly alternating between one direction of traffic and the other on the one part of the road that is open. Not so in the land of collectivist thinking. Here, a partial closure means you make your way to the front by any means necessary, which mostly means everybody driving on the wrong side of the road. No problem, until the drivers coming the other direction have to make their way through the veritable parking lot that has formed on both sides of road. How these situations are eventually resolved is a mystery, but suffice it to say that nobody benefits from this sort of behavior, except for perhaps the snacks salespeople who frequent such areas.

According to Delicious' thermos theory, the Chinese people are only warm towards the people they know well and don't think much about the people outside that. Whether they don't think about the other people, or don't care that they're causing harm to them, I don't know. My suspicion is that it's largely because they can get away with it. It's very taboo to cause somebody to lose face by pointing out "bad" behavior. This taboo doesn't really bother me, possibly because the Chinese seem to be much more amicable towards correction from a foreigner than another Chinese. Whether it's chastising somebody for cutting in line, or tossing their trash into the Yangtze river, the other Chinese around seem to be appreciative of my attempts to spread a little bit of collectivist thought. That being said, the Chinese I have met are unbelievably selfless when it comes to their very close circle of friends and family to an extent that is virtually unthinkable in the States, which is a topic for next time.

While I was teaching at Super Education, I had a student whose English name was Nathan. I never got to know him very well, but in the few classes we had together I gave him my QQ number. At some point during one of our online conversations, I told him my father was visiting China, which immediately prompted Nathan to invite us to the denim factory where he works. Nathan seemed to think that we could help his company broach the US denim market. After honestly disclosing to Nathan that neither my father nor I had any contacts in the US fabric industry, he didn't cancel the invitation so we hopped in a bus to Wujin district in Changzhou to see the factory.

Much to Nathan's chagrin, my father and I were much more interested in the looms, the distinct lack of any semblance of safety precautions (save the old surgical masks on the men working in the dusty recycling room), and the factory workers than we were in the finished product he wanted us to help export. We probably spent a good 30 minutes in the main hall where 60 or so huge looms were each thunderously weaving 4,000 threads together at lightning pace to make the denim fabric. I'd read about looms in history class, but standing in front of one drumming away can really help your understanding of how England was able to so quickly dominate the textile industry.

We stopped to talk to one woman whose job it was to load the cartridges that are then fed into the looms. For 12 hours per day, 7 days per week, and 51 weeks per year, she sits on a short stool on the concrete floor loading thread onto the cartridges. The pay is actually reasonable by Chinese standards, 80元/day and both room and board are provided. However, it's two thirds of what I make and I'm working 4 hours per day, 3 days per week, and 32 weeks per year. I couldn't help but feel sorry for her, although in her mind I'm sure 80元/day in the factory is a hell of a lot better than 10元/day on a farm in her home province.

Still, the only difference between us is that I had the opportunity to receive an education (and didn't squander it). Her job uses a skill that can be learned in a day or two, and my job uses a skill set that takes years of training. Which got me to thinking, the Internet has flattened the world in the sense that now almost anybody has the opportunity to educate themselves if they have the ambition and can afford to set aside the time to do it, which really isn't that many people. What would really flatten the world is something that could cheaply and instantaneously teach people any skill they wished, a la the Matrix. I wonder who would be willing to sit in a stiflingly hot and noisy factory threading a loom if everybody had the ability to be a brain surgeon, an airline pilot, a professional sports player, or a skillful musician.

As a gesture of appreciation for my students who spent their time and energy tutoring me in Chinese, I decided to give them each a Kiva gift certificate. Kiva is an organization that links consumers with micro-credit projects in the developing world. Owners of the gift certificates get to choose which project they would like to support, and then observe as the project grows and the money is repaid. If, as in most cases, the money is repaid in full, the owner may then opt to reinvest in another project or withdraw the money for their own use. Although I recognize the irony in giving Chinese students money to regift to the "developing" world, I figured it wouldn't hurt to expose them to the idea, and at the very least they should get the money back after a year or so, at which point they could use it however they see fit.

That was the idea at least. With each student I explained to them how the process worked, that they would initially be helping somebody in a third world country (that isn't sitting on $800,000,000,000 in U.S. bonds) and then in a year or so they would have about 170元 to spend on whatever they wanted. I told them if they had any problems figuring out how to use the gift certificate that I would happily sit down with them and show them how. That was six months ago. To date, not a single certificate has been used and only two of the students even registered on Kiva's website.

I understand that 170元 isn't exactly the X-Prize, but I'm dealing with students who are working for 7元/hour cleaning bathrooms at McDonald's. So if they spend less than 24 hours figuring out how to access the money, they've come out ahead and learned some English to boot! It is therefore fascinating to me that not one of them took the time to figure out how to use the gift certificate, which had instructions in relatively simple English, or even took the time to call me and ask how they could possibly get access to this small fortune.

As far as I can tell Chinese students are not exposed to problems where the solution is not simple regurgitation of a fact or process that they have already learned. Deciphering the English on the gift certificate, navigating the website, and then entering the information would have required some critical thinking that was either too difficult or not worth 170元. Since that amounts to 24 hours of work at McDonald's, I'd tend to think that the problem is that the thinking was too difficult. Alternatively, they are true to their birth-right in a communist country and just aren't interested in money. Either way, I'm perplexed.