This is mostly coming "straight from the horses mouth" if you will, so I'll allow myself some leeway.
I have noticed for some while that foreigners - as frightening as they might have originally been considered - are representing something of coolness here. It is true that I'm being stared at a lot, but 95% of the time - this is with some sort of admiration. A lot of Chinese - mainly young people and children - just love to communicate with foreigners, even if that means just saying "hello" or "how are you?".
In my case, there's the added advantage of the protruding belly - it seems like Chinese people just cannot get enough of the Buddha thing I have going - this might just be the thing that keeps getting me all them free drinks.
This is one with the clubs, and the dancing - copied 1-to-1 from MTV, all apart of feeling closer to western culture. They see a foreigner in a club, and they expect her/him to automatically pull out some serious MTV dancing routines.
With that, and maybe because of that - Chinese men fear nothing more than a foreigner man next to their girlfriend.
Teach (my teacher of the last few weeks) is 26, coming from a city in Henan (just north east of the area I'll be traveling). Her big dream is to open a Bar of her own when she's 35. In the meantime, she really enjoys teaching Chinese to foreigners. She started with this accidentally, by helping out a foreigner woman on the street, and now left her hotel-job to join this school and teach me (yes, I was the first experiment).
Teach says that it is quite difficult for Chinese men to accept that she is working in the vicinity of foreigners. She was recently on what might be considered a first date. All was going well until the guy asked her what she was doing for work.
She told him she was teaching Chinese (bad move), and he asked "Chinese? who are you teaching Chinese? ..."
And there you go - this was the end of it.
Generally speaking, it seems that most of Chinese men will find it very difficult to live with the fact that their wife-oriented girlfriend or their wife will have work that puts them in touch with foreigners.
And this can be pretty tough for women that have passed 25, and are fearing getting to 30 without marriage - becoming what is known as 3S ladies - originally coined for Single, Seventies (born) and Stuck, but we can generalize by replacing Seventies with Thirties (age). See here.
The foreigner thing is rather a singular case of a broader picture - not unfamiliar to men all around the world - we (men) being jealous of capable independent women. The point just seems to magnify itself and be crystal clear, rather than sub-conscious when it comes to the foreigner issue.
I said wife-oriented girlfriend before, as this apparently can be quite specific. As teach says (she can say it, as she was quite in love with a married-man with a 7-yearold daughter), girlfriends and wife are separate things here.
Creating a family is an expectation and tradition, and both men and women feel the pressure to get there in their 20's (the law actually forbids women to marry here before they're 20, and men before they're 22 - but nobody seems to care). So they opt to quickly find someone suitable for starting a family, but then many times find other forms of fun or love outside the nest.
Not highly surprising, when you hear about the expectations from Teach's last boyfriend. That boyfriend comes from a small city in Guizhou province. For context, here's a quite from Lonely Planet: " Poor Guizhou, always the short-end-of-the-stick southwest China province. A much-quoted proverb has it as a place 'without three li of flat land, three days of fine weather, or three cents to rub together', Ouch. "
The guy is now "making it", jumping between Kunming and Chengdu (capital of Sichuan province). The guy was expecting Teach - if they were to be married - to go and live with his family back in Guizhou, while he will continue working (and partying) between Kunming and Chengdu. (she said "no" by the way)
This is quite the norm in many cases - not something that was never heard of. While Teach is really fond of drinking and bars, she's not really into the club thing. She has a friend though - a married man, with his wife and daughter leaving in some remote town while he's working the Kunming-Chengdu line. She says that he really likes the clubs, and has numerous "close" female friends.
You're getting the picture, but this is just one woman telling a story, so I asked for the opinion of Lin Yang (fabricated name). Lin is 25 (just entering the pressure zone), half Han and Half Yi (minority). Came to Kunming from a small town not too far off. She's been in Kunming working in a Jewelery shop for the last 5 years, and she has a boyfriend she's been living together with for the last 2 years. She originally thought she wants to marry the guy, but seems like she's recently going through some second thoughts. Her boyfriend recently told her that she's a bit too much on the chubby side, and he might not marry her. Her parents don't really like him, and would rather she doesn't marry him.
I asked Lin whether she would go for a combo as described above - marrying a guy and joining his family in some remote location (where she would probably be a slave of the mother-in-law), while he will continue to work in the city. She said that she doesn't like the idea, but that probably she will agree indeed.
.
Showing posts with label China trip. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China trip. Show all posts
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Kunming 昆明 - Part II
Continued from Kunming 昆明 - part I ...
I did promise to talk a bit about the club thing here. Clubs and bars are not really what you'd call traditional China, but they seem to be abundant in all big cities.
It's definitely an interesting mix of old and new.
The clubs usually have a mix of music, but all and all focused on trashy club-trance, technosized dance and Chinese hits, and most important - make it loud (nothing new so far).
Although these are - generally speaking - clubs, and the atmosphere is dancing, most of the clubs don't really have a proper dance floor (a few do), but rather the full place is filled with small round tables all over what was supposed to be the dance floor (and why not, if people are ready to stand there and buy an extra bottle).
These clubs usually add on some color in the way of some life acts - triplets of skinny dancers with minimal clothing, drag queens, Chinese pop wannabe singers. These moments are usually when the music might get semi-descent for a little while.
"Disco" in Kundu is as trashy a place as you can get, but it has an operational dance-floor, with a nice ratio of about 100 men/ 1 woman, and a wannabe radio-MC's that interrupt the music every roughly 20 seconds, so if you have some patience you can enjoy it. Around 1:15, just after the daily drag-queen finishes her thing, there's a moment of descent trance when they put on "Infected Mushroom".
Drinks of the day are warm Beers - bought at multiples (usually, about a dozen a time), or Whiskey mixed generously with room-temperature green tea. Either is drunk from very small glasses.
The beers are around 3-3.5%, and so is the mix of Whiskey with tea (thank god for that).
The whiskey, is the local breweries finest, usually bottled in your choice of Chivas Regal or Johnie Walker Black. If you really want to splash out - you are entertaining people or female company and you feel for some reason that you want to show off with spending extra money - you can usually opt in to pay twice and have the same Whiskey presented in a more classic way (say, in a 18 year-old Chivas bottle).
The tendency in the clubs is to try and get you a table, were you would normally be presented with a menu suggesting that you buy a whole bottle of Whiskey or a couple of dozen beer-bottles. They seem to fail to understand that one person does not require a whole bottle (or a table). And it's not necessarily a language barrier.
Not to despair. The trick is to arrive when the place is full - so they do not really have any tables to try and sit you at. Arriving to the main club areas after 11:30 or so, will usually allow one to just be ignored entering the place, and then go around as you will and enjoy.
This version of clubbing is so not standard, that it might actually be difficult in this case to get yourself a drink, or even find out where the bar is hidden.
Also, most of the clubs only (!) stock Whiskey and beers (bad beers), so you'd need to do some club-hopping to find out one where you can get your Cuba Libre flowing. But if you're ready to experiment a bit, and walk out whenever someone insists on escorting you to a table of your own - you'll be in for a good evening before too long.
While standing around the tables and drinking, it is highly important to have some drinking-facilitation. This comes in the form of games. There are a few favorites around, and it most of the clubs you'll see most of the people deeply occupied with padded glasses (usually red) from which they are rolling dice, or otherwise you'd see them playing cards or waving their hands frantically as they play group-stone-paper-scissors. I'm starting to slowly get the idea behind some of these, so might at some point do a post with the rules for some of these.
Getting the point, however, doesn't really help matters - as you might end up being too good and hence not drinking enough - bad company in other words.
There is one game, however, which stands out as a clear all-around favorite.
Called "get the foreigner drunk". EVERYBODY just loves this game, and I actually enjoyed it on my first night.
Really, if you don't mind drinking only the tea'd-Whiskey and warm beers, there is not particular need to spend money at all. You just get to a club, and stand or stroll slowly between the tables. They all stare at the foreigner anyway (Kunming is actually full with foreigners, but it seems they like to hang out together in foreigner-oriented bars, so I very rarely saw any foreigners inside the clubs so far), so before too long - someone will add to the smile a "cheers" movement. You can reply with an empty hand (which will speed up the next step), or cling glasses and have a sip (which will bring the next step just as fast), and then they'll signal you to get close to the table, where a glass is already being filled for you with beer/ whiskey. They might let you off the hook the first time (that's in the case that first toast will include all residents of the table), but by the second glass if they're patient, they'll make you understand they expect you to drink-up properly. This is because they person you just drank with did the same.
Only that the table is with 10 people around it, and once you've cleared the glass, it's being filled again so that you can drink with the next person down the line. When the table is more or less done with the round, there can be a few options (and don't forget, there is not much communication involved other than the toasts).
Possibly, if they found you really intriguing (and you have not found the experience too boring yet), they might continue with toasts, this time more sporadically, not in clear round-the-table order, and will point for you some nice girls (I cannot say about pointing boys for girls, as I hadn't had the pleasure). This is true event if they are themselves girls (assuming a mixed table). Also, usually, you'd find out quickly enough that a table nearby wants a piece of the action, so you'd be pulled a bit to have some drinks with them as well.
Sometimes, they'd actually release you after the first round by smiling politely while waving you goodbye.
On my first night here, I was actually pulled away from the table I was drinking with by some nice Chinese girl. The people at the table with me motioned me positively to go and follow her (she was not from the next table). I had a feeling that this was something of a more official nature, as I was following her towards the exit of the club, but just as we reached the exit, she turned right, and after a few more meters we reached a table with her friends. She just wanted to treat her friends for a round of their favorite game, after which I got the sign that I can go back to my original "friends".
At nights like this, you really get to appreciate the super-weak beers, the extra tea in the Whiskey, and especially the extra-small glasses. It all suddenly makes sense.
I was surprised to find out that not a lot of people in the school (living here for a while) have noticed that, but Kunming has what seems to be a surprisingly big Gay community. At least on the male part. This might not be as straightforward to see, I guess (if you're blind), since a lot of men here can be seen as having somewhat of a gayish behavior - specially around foreigners in clubs - and even the gays tend to not kiss here outdoors, but still - this can get quite obvious. The men-women ratio, as mentioned, is not favoring men, so you might not be sure at a first glance, but on some nights in some clubs, and on the streets as well, this is becoming more and more obvious for anyone who cares to look.
I wouldn't know to say much about a gay "scene" here as such, and I didn't run into any gay clubs per-se, but they are definitely here in numbers, and not hiding.
Another option in Kunming, is to go for a bit of inspiration on Green-lake park. Specially in the evenings (or early mornings, as I hear well from my window), you can find people practice their Chinese-opera singing (usually, they have been practicing for many many years with no apparent success, but are not deterred by this technicality), Tai-chi, or what seems to be quite popular, dancing in groups to the sound of Techno. The Techno groups are mixed with a tendency for older crowd, and there's usually some sort of a leader-figure that in between tracks gives instructions about the steps for the next track. Really cool staff.
.
I did promise to talk a bit about the club thing here. Clubs and bars are not really what you'd call traditional China, but they seem to be abundant in all big cities.
It's definitely an interesting mix of old and new.
The clubs usually have a mix of music, but all and all focused on trashy club-trance, technosized dance and Chinese hits, and most important - make it loud (nothing new so far).
Although these are - generally speaking - clubs, and the atmosphere is dancing, most of the clubs don't really have a proper dance floor (a few do), but rather the full place is filled with small round tables all over what was supposed to be the dance floor (and why not, if people are ready to stand there and buy an extra bottle).
 |
| Kundu club |
These clubs usually add on some color in the way of some life acts - triplets of skinny dancers with minimal clothing, drag queens, Chinese pop wannabe singers. These moments are usually when the music might get semi-descent for a little while.
"Disco" in Kundu is as trashy a place as you can get, but it has an operational dance-floor, with a nice ratio of about 100 men/ 1 woman, and a wannabe radio-MC's that interrupt the music every roughly 20 seconds, so if you have some patience you can enjoy it. Around 1:15, just after the daily drag-queen finishes her thing, there's a moment of descent trance when they put on "Infected Mushroom".
Drinks of the day are warm Beers - bought at multiples (usually, about a dozen a time), or Whiskey mixed generously with room-temperature green tea. Either is drunk from very small glasses.
The beers are around 3-3.5%, and so is the mix of Whiskey with tea (thank god for that).
The whiskey, is the local breweries finest, usually bottled in your choice of Chivas Regal or Johnie Walker Black. If you really want to splash out - you are entertaining people or female company and you feel for some reason that you want to show off with spending extra money - you can usually opt in to pay twice and have the same Whiskey presented in a more classic way (say, in a 18 year-old Chivas bottle).
The tendency in the clubs is to try and get you a table, were you would normally be presented with a menu suggesting that you buy a whole bottle of Whiskey or a couple of dozen beer-bottles. They seem to fail to understand that one person does not require a whole bottle (or a table). And it's not necessarily a language barrier.
Not to despair. The trick is to arrive when the place is full - so they do not really have any tables to try and sit you at. Arriving to the main club areas after 11:30 or so, will usually allow one to just be ignored entering the place, and then go around as you will and enjoy.
This version of clubbing is so not standard, that it might actually be difficult in this case to get yourself a drink, or even find out where the bar is hidden.
Also, most of the clubs only (!) stock Whiskey and beers (bad beers), so you'd need to do some club-hopping to find out one where you can get your Cuba Libre flowing. But if you're ready to experiment a bit, and walk out whenever someone insists on escorting you to a table of your own - you'll be in for a good evening before too long.
While standing around the tables and drinking, it is highly important to have some drinking-facilitation. This comes in the form of games. There are a few favorites around, and it most of the clubs you'll see most of the people deeply occupied with padded glasses (usually red) from which they are rolling dice, or otherwise you'd see them playing cards or waving their hands frantically as they play group-stone-paper-scissors. I'm starting to slowly get the idea behind some of these, so might at some point do a post with the rules for some of these.
Getting the point, however, doesn't really help matters - as you might end up being too good and hence not drinking enough - bad company in other words.
 |
| Assorted Yunnan mushrooms on a Kunming street |
There is one game, however, which stands out as a clear all-around favorite.
Called "get the foreigner drunk". EVERYBODY just loves this game, and I actually enjoyed it on my first night.
Really, if you don't mind drinking only the tea'd-Whiskey and warm beers, there is not particular need to spend money at all. You just get to a club, and stand or stroll slowly between the tables. They all stare at the foreigner anyway (Kunming is actually full with foreigners, but it seems they like to hang out together in foreigner-oriented bars, so I very rarely saw any foreigners inside the clubs so far), so before too long - someone will add to the smile a "cheers" movement. You can reply with an empty hand (which will speed up the next step), or cling glasses and have a sip (which will bring the next step just as fast), and then they'll signal you to get close to the table, where a glass is already being filled for you with beer/ whiskey. They might let you off the hook the first time (that's in the case that first toast will include all residents of the table), but by the second glass if they're patient, they'll make you understand they expect you to drink-up properly. This is because they person you just drank with did the same.
Only that the table is with 10 people around it, and once you've cleared the glass, it's being filled again so that you can drink with the next person down the line. When the table is more or less done with the round, there can be a few options (and don't forget, there is not much communication involved other than the toasts).
Possibly, if they found you really intriguing (and you have not found the experience too boring yet), they might continue with toasts, this time more sporadically, not in clear round-the-table order, and will point for you some nice girls (I cannot say about pointing boys for girls, as I hadn't had the pleasure). This is true event if they are themselves girls (assuming a mixed table). Also, usually, you'd find out quickly enough that a table nearby wants a piece of the action, so you'd be pulled a bit to have some drinks with them as well.
Sometimes, they'd actually release you after the first round by smiling politely while waving you goodbye.
 |
| Midday Siesta in Kunming, by the East Pagoda |
On my first night here, I was actually pulled away from the table I was drinking with by some nice Chinese girl. The people at the table with me motioned me positively to go and follow her (she was not from the next table). I had a feeling that this was something of a more official nature, as I was following her towards the exit of the club, but just as we reached the exit, she turned right, and after a few more meters we reached a table with her friends. She just wanted to treat her friends for a round of their favorite game, after which I got the sign that I can go back to my original "friends".
At nights like this, you really get to appreciate the super-weak beers, the extra tea in the Whiskey, and especially the extra-small glasses. It all suddenly makes sense.
 |
| Taking a stroll - Kunming streets |
I wouldn't know to say much about a gay "scene" here as such, and I didn't run into any gay clubs per-se, but they are definitely here in numbers, and not hiding.
Another option in Kunming, is to go for a bit of inspiration on Green-lake park. Specially in the evenings (or early mornings, as I hear well from my window), you can find people practice their Chinese-opera singing (usually, they have been practicing for many many years with no apparent success, but are not deterred by this technicality), Tai-chi, or what seems to be quite popular, dancing in groups to the sound of Techno. The Techno groups are mixed with a tendency for older crowd, and there's usually some sort of a leader-figure that in between tracks gives instructions about the steps for the next track. Really cool staff.
 |
| Street beggars - definitely exist here, but very easygoing for China - no groping, no heavy insitence - nothing like what one will experience in Shanghai or Shenzhen |
.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Kunming 昆明 - part I
If you're interested in some general information and stats about Kunming, you can go ahead and look here.
To cover the basics for context, Kunming is the capital of Yunnan Province, has a population of 3-8 million (depends on definition and who you're asking), and is quite elevated at 1,900m - the last fact has helped get it its nickname "spring city".
Yunnan - the province - is the south-western-most province in China, bordering with Vietnam Laos and Burma, and further surrounded by Tibet, Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou and Guangxi.
As the capital city of Yunnan, you can find here people and food influenced by the surroundings and various ethnicities,mainly Hui (Muslims), Dai (Thai related) and Yi, but unfortunately, the Hui are not as connected to the Muslim Asians as those in Xinjiang (the north-western-most Province), and there is a clear lack of Lamb meat dishes around.
Kunming's elevation/ moderate weather/ "Spring city" status can remind one of Dublin in a few ways. For one, there is a relative lack of mosquitoes. This was quite a surprising finding, as some pre-reading suggested that mosquitoes are around as much as in any other place (minus Ireland), as did the nets on all the windows in my apartment.
OK, the nets on the windows, and the 24th floor dwelling may be of some influence, but I still found it surprising to have waited a whole week before getting beaten for the first time, including a couple of days in Jiang-Shui to the south - a city with a lot of water and rice paddies around it.
And there's the weather. Yes, it's August, and it can get at time pretty hot, but in this area, getting as hot as 30 degrees, is as good as it gets. The weather really does resemble Dublin - on an average day, you can go through the 4 seasons, from a strong rain to clear sunny skies, from chilly to hot. It's only about 5-10 degrees above the average temperatures in Dublin.
The Game of the day in Kunming is playing Chicken with the cars/ buses/ taxis and the thousands of small electrical scooters on the streets. In most of the road you want to cross, you will not find proper traffic-lights, although the traffic is quite heavy, and the way to go is just go and hope for the best. None of the vehicles is taking much note of any of the traffic rules or signs anyway.
The way to go is jump in front of the cars, with the assumption that the cars will just decide to stop.
The traffic in Kunming brings us to an important observation (just before we can to some fun staff about clubs and drinking, so hang in there).
The traffic is just a small example of what I see more and more to be the most fertile ground for Game-Theorists. Behavior of the Chinese seems to be as basically rationale (in a pure economic sense) as it gets, every behavior being cost-benefit based (on the personal level), driven strongly by considerations of gains and losses.
This means that China can be a great place to experiment and implement economic behavioral theories, a great place for government intervention mechanisms, Mechanism Design implementations, etc.
This also (probably) implies that old-school management techniques applying good-old stick-and-carrot probably work best here.
"Cheap talk" is at revealing itself here in full, and any verbal agreements between people here, are only held to the extent that those agreements work well for all parties later on.
I spent most of last week here with no light in the bathroom. On Friday, when my roommate (Zhang Laoshi, you remember him) finished partially repairing the pipe issue (don't ask), it turns out that on the way the light somehow stopped working. As I notified the American here (Jonathan), he said no problem, Zhang is heading anyway for some shopping today (Friday), so he'll buy a new light on the way.
On Saturday, I notified Jonathan again that I am still taking showers in the dump, and got the usual: "oh? But Zhang said he fixed it. I'll see to it, it will be fixed today. Sounds good."
On Sunday morning, I ran into Zhang in the apartment. He casually asked me about drinking together that evening. In return, I opted for losing face, and raised my voice a bit when asking him about the light in the bathroom. He said "I'm not sure there's a problem". ...
I ended up raising the tone a notch when asking him how can it take a whole week to change a bulb. This of course would not have had a particular influence other than where the conversation has started.
That evening we were sharing a couple of glasses of BaiJiu and MiJiu (52% and 25% local alcohols), enjoying the light coming out of the bathroom.
.
To cover the basics for context, Kunming is the capital of Yunnan Province, has a population of 3-8 million (depends on definition and who you're asking), and is quite elevated at 1,900m - the last fact has helped get it its nickname "spring city".
Yunnan - the province - is the south-western-most province in China, bordering with Vietnam Laos and Burma, and further surrounded by Tibet, Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou and Guangxi.
As the capital city of Yunnan, you can find here people and food influenced by the surroundings and various ethnicities,mainly Hui (Muslims), Dai (Thai related) and Yi, but unfortunately, the Hui are not as connected to the Muslim Asians as those in Xinjiang (the north-western-most Province), and there is a clear lack of Lamb meat dishes around.
 |
| Kunming at night |
Kunming's elevation/ moderate weather/ "Spring city" status can remind one of Dublin in a few ways. For one, there is a relative lack of mosquitoes. This was quite a surprising finding, as some pre-reading suggested that mosquitoes are around as much as in any other place (minus Ireland), as did the nets on all the windows in my apartment.
OK, the nets on the windows, and the 24th floor dwelling may be of some influence, but I still found it surprising to have waited a whole week before getting beaten for the first time, including a couple of days in Jiang-Shui to the south - a city with a lot of water and rice paddies around it.
And there's the weather. Yes, it's August, and it can get at time pretty hot, but in this area, getting as hot as 30 degrees, is as good as it gets. The weather really does resemble Dublin - on an average day, you can go through the 4 seasons, from a strong rain to clear sunny skies, from chilly to hot. It's only about 5-10 degrees above the average temperatures in Dublin.
 |
| Taking the kids for some recreation in the city center |
 |
| Kunming's main commercial street |
The way to go is jump in front of the cars, with the assumption that the cars will just decide to stop.
The traffic in Kunming brings us to an important observation (just before we can to some fun staff about clubs and drinking, so hang in there).
 |
| reminiscing on better days |
The traffic is just a small example of what I see more and more to be the most fertile ground for Game-Theorists. Behavior of the Chinese seems to be as basically rationale (in a pure economic sense) as it gets, every behavior being cost-benefit based (on the personal level), driven strongly by considerations of gains and losses.
This means that China can be a great place to experiment and implement economic behavioral theories, a great place for government intervention mechanisms, Mechanism Design implementations, etc.
This also (probably) implies that old-school management techniques applying good-old stick-and-carrot probably work best here.
"Cheap talk" is at revealing itself here in full, and any verbal agreements between people here, are only held to the extent that those agreements work well for all parties later on.
I spent most of last week here with no light in the bathroom. On Friday, when my roommate (Zhang Laoshi, you remember him) finished partially repairing the pipe issue (don't ask), it turns out that on the way the light somehow stopped working. As I notified the American here (Jonathan), he said no problem, Zhang is heading anyway for some shopping today (Friday), so he'll buy a new light on the way.
On Saturday, I notified Jonathan again that I am still taking showers in the dump, and got the usual: "oh? But Zhang said he fixed it. I'll see to it, it will be fixed today. Sounds good."
On Sunday morning, I ran into Zhang in the apartment. He casually asked me about drinking together that evening. In return, I opted for losing face, and raised my voice a bit when asking him about the light in the bathroom. He said "I'm not sure there's a problem". ...
I ended up raising the tone a notch when asking him how can it take a whole week to change a bulb. This of course would not have had a particular influence other than where the conversation has started.
That evening we were sharing a couple of glasses of BaiJiu and MiJiu (52% and 25% local alcohols), enjoying the light coming out of the bathroom.
 |
| One of the few cities within the city - the East Pagoda |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
