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My experience with this came three weeks ago when the owner of my English school threw a beach party for the employees from us and the employees from his music schools. All the attendees arrived at their respective schools and were shuttled down to the site in coach busses which should have been my first clue. To me, coach busses evoke pictures of uniformly bright colored tee-shirts, chaperones with microphones, and time specifically intended for the gift shop. Beach parties on the other hand, do not come to mind.

At the beach, lunch was served in one of the larger aforementioned bungalows, and periodically interrupted by a Chinese ‘envoy’ stopping by the English school’s table to make sure we were having fun at such a magnificent party—as a side note, it seems that in China, magnificent equals big and big equals magnificent; it is big so it must be good. After lunch came the games. Not knowing the true nature of the games, I sat obediently with the rest of the guests for forty-five minutes while people sound checked the impossibly fuzzy sound system, and made various other preparations to make sure the fun went off without a hitch. The fact that we could have just relaxed and gone our own ways until the games were ready didn’t seem so register or bother anyone. By the time the games actually started I had given up on showing a good face and fallen asleep. Upon waking and recognizing the all afternoon nature of the games, myself and the other foreign teachers instead opted to throw rocks at a shoe. In the evening, organized activities continued with dinner and a stage performance filled with an unending sequence of speeches and halfheartedly prepared sub-amateur level musical sing alongs. It was right around then that I completely gave up all pretenses and left to watch waves crashing on the shore, a slightly less repetitive activity.

Without experiencing it directly, it’s hard to predict or picture how the group mentality of Chinese culture manifests itself, and upon first arriving I was surprised at how little I felt like I was living in a hive. This was largely due to the expat cocoon I was living in. But as I had more experiences and got used to my new life, I noticed subtle cues that Chinese culture is not oriented toward individuality. The most obvious examples of Chinese group-think are outings like the beach party which make the assumption that you need strictly organized fun to have a good time. It seems like ‘organized fun’ should be an oxymoron. At least, it does to me given that my conception of fun is very closely tied to feelings of spontaneity, creativity, and improvisation as opposed to rules and structure. For the Chinese, however, fun is something you must prepare and plan for so that the group is organized and accounted for. Such outings have a way of making you feel as though you’re walking among uncharacteristically jolly zombies that have not yet realized the feast you represent.

A subtler cue as to the group culture is people’s lack of individual motivation to push their boundaries. Group activities come with built in social justifications for participating, and people here don’t understand behavior that lacks those justifications, even when it is not objectionable. Most of the Chinese people who ask about my time off can’t understand why I would do something like camp on a mountain by myself. No one planned a group excursion to hike a mountain or explore random parts of the city, so why did I go? Who told me that it would be fun? I can’t imagine the confusion my bus excursions would have considering their inherently free-form nature.

Some might use the rampant spread of Capitalism in China as an indication of increasing individuality and a counter argument to this analysis. And while they are right that Chinese have been rapacious capitalists, the vast majority of businesses only further illustrate group-think in their homogeneity. Businesses here fall into a very few classifications—mostly cookie cutter restaurants, hair salons, and corner stores—and within those classifications, very few distinguishing markers in appearance or service exist. Ingenuity is left to a precious few. The capitalist style economies should inspire stores to innovate, and some do, but on the whole, any one restaurant will look and perform identically to the one across the street. The same is true of corner stores, labor shops, apartment buildings, and hair salons. Especially hair salons. So in that sense, despite the bravery needed to start a business, these people still fit the mold. The difference between the US and China is that US businesses strive to stand out while Chinese business owners don’t seem to realize that they could even try. “Do you want to be an entrepreneur? We have a package deal for that too!”

Western Way- If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands!

Chinese Way- You are happy, and you know it. Clap your hands.
The eerily clear but unspoken response:
“Yes we are! Yes we do! Let’s clap our hands!”

Of course, I am a westerner, and accordingly biased in my preferences and observations. Chinese people clearly love their brand of fun and don’t have widespread problems with their cultural habits or they would likely have changed by now. I’m not going to go on a behavioral crusade any time soon, even if I wanted to try, no one would take serious critiques from a foreigner. But then, I’m also not going to go home and tell all my friends about how much fun the three legged race was on the beach or how great it is to just shove someone out of the way if you want to board the bus first.

I have been in China for a little under four months now.

When I look back the day I spent traveling here, it seems more like four years than four months, however, for the most part, it has flown by. My weeks seem to slip by faster than I ever imagined they could. My work schedule is heaviest on Saturday and Sunday so Sunday nights have a way of turning into Saturday mornings like the weekdays were a curious afterthought.

Months on the other hand, seem to roll by right on time.

I’ve settled in faster than I might expect. I guess I never thought of China becoming mundane, but there it is, a feeling of comfort that comes around because most parts of your new life are expected, or at least not constantly new and surprising. I have developed a level of normalcy, something which seems pretty outlandish and bizarre when I consider it from my viewpoints in America. I have enough Chinese under my belt to handle most daily needs like buying food, bank transactions, taking taxis, and brief conversations about who I am and where I’m from. For anything beyond that, I have a few Chinese friends that can help me out. I’d be foolish to say I’ve experienced all I have to experience here, I experience new things every day, but I’m no longer habitually on the lookout for the new and novel everywhere I look.

For the most part, my growing comfort with China is welcome, but it can come at a price, as it is somewhat frustrating to grow accustomed to something you are trying to critically observe. New experiences gradually diminish, and with them, a lot of easy inspiration for photography, writing, or whatever else you need it for. I rarely notice the masked street sweepers anymore where they used to stand out as clearly as scarecrows. The oppressive and bland industrialized architecture that seems to pervade throughout the country once imposed on me, now it’s no more than a backdrop. I try to retain courteous western habits, but Dalian’s residents’ lack thereof is no longer much of a talking point. Of course, the upshot is that observations are bound to carry more insight and meaning if you don’t become too complacent with life to stop having them. Learning to seek new experiences is a necessity that does not openly announce itself and can be hard to find motivation for when you’ve developed some level of comfort.

To stave of this complacency, I’ve taken to riding random busses to the last stop. If the bus doesn’t go as far as another bus does, I keep going. I’ve found this to be instantly gratifying as I will never have cause to go to most of the places I’ve been through my bus adventures. My first escapade revealed a vast construction project responsible for expanding the peninsula’s eastern edge at least a kilometer out to sea, a beautiful seaside highway, and my first taste of oysters. My second time out yielded a textbook normal fault and a forest maze of giant spider webs inhabited by the most terrifyingly large and yellow arachnids I have ever seen. The third time, I stumbled upon a vividly graphic and fresh car accident, forests of cruelly uniform high-rises under construction, and expansive fields of sunflowers…lots of them. I rue the day that I run out of busses.

Four months have flown by with no sigh of a relenting pace. I’d be foolish to say I’ve experienced all I have to experience here, I experience new things every day, but I’m no longer perpetually wide eyed.

Looking at the man, I resent the chauvinistic attitude of treating women as a trophy, and a lot of men interested in Chinese women are looking for exactly that. As a whole, Chinese women behave the way that men wanted women to behave in the 50’s. It is a country full of straight black haired Mrs. Cleavers. Thus, it seems a lot of men come to China so they can be the king of their castle, or the ones that don’t realize they can be once they get here and jump on the bandwagon. I also get the sense that a lot of guys who can’t hack it in the west come to Asia to better their odds. You can’t help but wonder why a western man would want a quiet, demure, and obedient spouse, and the best answer that comes to mind is insecurity. This returns to the idea of women as a trophy, in that a lot of men here seem to treat their partners as proof that they can sleep with a beautiful woman, or just any woman. Thus, as soon as I find out that a guy has a Chinese wife or girlfriend, I begin to speculate on the reasons why they might strike out with women at home. If you don’t fit in with your own culture and can’t get women there, why not move to a culture where the women are plentiful and only care that you are western? This brings me to the other side of things.

With regard to the woman, I can’t help but suspect, whether she is aware of it or not, she is just gold digging, as western men tend to have more money and treat their partners better than Chinese men do. Find a western man, any one will do. Thus, both sides of the relationship are based on winning a prize more than it is on feelings and compatibility.

Clearly there are exceptions to all this. I have met some couples that seem to have a very healthy and equal relationship, though it always involves a Chinese girl who displays more independence and personality than her peers, and a self-confident, socially adjusted western man. On the whole, however, I find reason to approach western-Chinese relationships with skepticism. Honestly, what are the odds of such high success rates for intercultural relationships unless they are fueled by agendas. The cultures certainly don’t mesh, and I’ve seen more chemistry between news reporters than I generally see between Western men and their Chinese wives. It also says something that I have yet to encounter a single western woman- Chinese man partnership.

To begin fixing this problem, I took some photos of the various views from my apartment. I hope that these will also help to fight the derth of Dalian images. Googling images of this city will bring up plenty of pictures, however, they either focus on the same places (the government buildings in People’s Square are not nearly interesting enough to support their internet bandwidth) or they give stunningly little perspective. To be fair, most of this city just doesn’t inspire great images. Dalian is very good at appearing like it could be any city, so there really isn’t any reason to document most of it any more than there is to document [insert mid-sized city in a developed country here].

With that, this is what I look at every day!

This is a southeast view from my bedroom window.

It takes about ten minutes walk from my apartment to the prominent building in the photo above. It would take twenty-five to thirty minutes to walk to the distant blue building.

A view to the southwest from my bedroom.

The three buildings in the background with sunshine still hitting them are about five blocks from Shane English School. It would take me about twenty-five minutes to walk to them and five minutes to get there in a taxi.

A view to the east from our living room.

Also beside the point is why something might be expensive in the first place. Ignoring the fact that most luxury goods are also selling the name, they usually have better design and quality to support the name. However, the Chinese are certainly not concerned about that. Nope, they’re just worried about the status symbol. The only thing is, everyone knows that everything is cheap and fake, so there is no way that anyone actually thinks anyone else’s ‘Armani’ T-shirt is authentic. Fortunately for the knock offs, they’re still more expensive than they would be without the labels, and thus, owning an expensive cheap knock off is the sheik thing to do in China. In the US, there is a popular resentment towards the name brand mark up. Here, that name brand mark up is exactly why people spend their money on those brands. Even more extreme, they seem to want to pay the mark up because they want to prove that they can. The same could be said of US consumers, however the difference is in the pervasiveness of the mentality.

The result is a huge population of people wearing Louis Vuitton knock offs, treating Pizza Hut like an upscale fine dining establishment, and talking on cheap cell phones that are designed to look expensive in that way only cheap plastic shit from Wal-Mart can. All this in an effort to emulate what the Chinese perceive as western or ‘American’, when if they did the same thing in America, people would just laugh at them. I still can’t help but smile at the irony.

And now we get to the most wonderful bit of Chinglish I’ve seen to date and the inspiration for this post, Trader Zhou’s:

Trader Zhou's, selling premium wines since...sometime after Trader Joe's was started.

As you may have guessed, ‘Zh’ in Pinyin (the phonetic spelling of Chinese) is pronounced like a ‘J’ in English, and upon seeing, this I nearly wet myself. It’s just a little too absurd. They even came close to the right font, and there is no way that Trader Joe’s is recognizable enough in Dalian that this store benefits significantly from the name, much less the font. There is a Trader Joe’s in Beijing, but given that Beijing is massive, and very few Dalian tourists would have found it, I’m betting that no one in Dalian has heard of it. So, the fact that this store exists is a testament to how absurdly committed to emulating western culture the Chinese can be. Even when there is no benefit from it, people go for the western rip off. That, or the owner has an awesome sense of humor and a very select audience. I hope for the latter considering that this is a wine store conspicuously lacking in Two Buck Chuck.

I settled on Ulanhot. Located just inside the boarder of Inner Mongolia, this small city actually lives up to its reputation of small with 280,000 people. You might as well call it ‘As Small As It Gets, China’. Of course, the train was leaving in an hour, which gave me just enough time to pack and catch it if I ran.

Needless to say, I caught the train, however, for the next 16 hours, I was not as optimistic about this as one might expect. Because I don’t speak Chinese very well, and I rarely even recognize when someone says something I do know, I use a lot of deductive logic to infer meaning. For the most part, this strategy works out well, but every system has its flaws. For example, upon indicating that I wanted a bed on the train, the ticket clerk told me they were sold out. Unfortunate, but I wasn’t going to let a little discomfort keep me from my first real trip in China. Of course I assumed that buying a train ticket in China meant that, at the very least, I would have a seat on the train. A nice, cramped airline coach style seat I could call my own for the next 16 hours.

Now, for those of you who might ever get on a train in China, read closely: Buying a train ticket in China does not carry the inherent meaning of a place to sit.

Upon boarding the train, I was a little disappointed to see that I would not be sitting on a luxuriously cramped airline coach style seat, but the equivalent of a high back diner booth, sans padding. I then went from disappointed to worried when I saw that all of those soon to be coveted high back booths were taken. I finally realized that my ticket did not entitle me to seating when I asked a man where I should go and he pointed to two Chinese characters on my ticket and simply said, “no seat”.

I decided to get off the train, and at the same time, the conductor decided to pull out of the station. I should mention that there were only enough seats for about half the people in the train car. This meant two things. First, there was no way I was going to work my way past the sea of Chinese people in time to get off the train, and second, I was not getting a seat any time soon. Any time soon turned out to be eight hours. It would have been much longer if it were not for a kind student who diligently scoured the seated masses for someone disembarking at an upcoming stop. I spent the following eight hours grateful that the large man with whom I shared a seat, left enough room for one cheek.

It seems appropriate to mention at this point that pissing into a squatter toilet on a moving train is remarkably similar to playing the carnival game where the handheld wand cannot connect to the moving spiral obstacle. It’s doable, but instead of a beep, when you screw up you have piss all over your shoes and legs. That’s not to say that there isn’t already piss all over you shoes, a byproduct of a system one step removed from pissing directly on the floor, but at least your legs have hope. When you go in, you just have to accept that everything will be wet and pretend that it’s from one of the crude periodic cleanings administered by the train staff. These bathrooms really bring the term ‘water closet’ to a whole new level of blunt literal meaning.

Upon arriving in Ulanhot, I set my sights on ensuring my return trip would have a bed. And after fending off the most well dressed, yet persistent beggar I’ve ever seen, I walked victoriously out of the station with a ‘hard sleeper’ ticket to see what Ulanhot had to offer me. Turns out, not a lot. Stepping out of the train station in Ulanhot gives a surprisingly accurate snapshot of the city as a whole, and the city as a whole does not have a lot to offer. The wide streets are lined with the type of monotonously utilitarian buildings unique to industrial cities, and given that the most exciting thing for the locals was me, I didn’t have a lot of hope for the underlying cultural scene. That may sound rather self centered and narrow minded, but when entire neighborhoods vacate the buildings to watch a foreigner walk down the road, you can’t help but get the sense that life in Ulanhot is pretty dull. I will grant that there is a temple I did not visit, but something about a monument to Genghis Kahn built in 1940 just doesn’t evoke awe.

I walked around long enough to let the city prove my gut reaction wrong, and as soon as it was clear it couldn’t, I turned toward some distant mountains and walked straight out of town.

Luckily for me, the surrounding countryside is exactly what I expected from Inner Mongolia: grassy mountains, prominent rock outcrops, and goat herders. I set up camp on a hill that overlooked the city to the north and a wide basin to the south, and spent the next two days reading, aimlessly hiking around, taking pictures, and studying Chinese. Natural settings are just as rejuvenating and rewarding on the other side of the world as they are at home.

The most amusing part of the countryside was how the farmers and ranchers barely gave me a second glance. Compared to the city, where I could have set up a freak show and paid for my entire trip, no one I met in the hills seemed to pay me any more attention than they would a local. Any odd glances I did get seemed to have more to do with my camera and tripod than my hair color.

As compared to the beginning of my trip, getting back to Dalian was rather dull. I drew more attention on my way back into town than I did on my way out, if that is possible, thanks to my dirty and disheveled presentation, and the train ride was relative paradise compared to the previous one, thanks to a bed. Though, the other passengers were certainly perturbed by my odor. Finally, the whole trip culminated in a 1 kilometer sprint from the train station to my apartment so that I would have a prayer of getting to my class merely fashionably late. No one will ever say that I didn’t milk those three days for every minute they were worth.

So with all this in mind, I came to China prepared to face strong resentment, but I never stopped to think of any particular reasons why Chinese people might hate us. We have not forcibly meddled with their government, invaded their country, or offended any minority or religious groups. And even if we had somehow offended a Chinese minority group, the Chinese government is too efficient at squashing rebellion for that dissent to take any roots. Just look at the current situation in Urumqi or previous unrest in Tibet. We support Taiwan’s independence, but thanks to the highly efficient state run media, I highly doubt that most Chinese people know about that. You might expect some people to resent the American economic driving forces behind poor working conditions and pay, but for the most part, they don’t seem to make that connection either. Instead, people are to be happy to have jobs and contribute to a growing economy. They seem pleased that things are getting better rather than frustrated that they are not better already. And if they are frustrated, they don’t seem to blame the American consumers on the other end of the rope. Instead, as I said before, people seem to love me precisely because I’m American.

It’s certainly not because of how I look. I’ve been brushed aside and marginalized a few times because people mistook me for a Russian. Blond hair and blue eyes tend to lead to that assumption in Dalian since wealthy Russians come here for the summer and do a good job of garnering ill will. However, once I tell people that I’m American, frowns turn upside down, the sun shines, and my shit smells like roses. On occasion, I can even detect a sense of awe and reverence in people’s voices. It sounds trite and self centered, but its there and it’s actually kind of unsettling. If you are wondering, I am not mistaking Chinese tones for awe and reverence.

Andy, one of my Chinese tutors, explained to me that many Chinese view America as a ‘better’ country. It doesn’t have anything to do with personal freedoms or national philosophy, so much as the opulence of our lifestyle. Most Americans have cars, houses, and various other goods that only very wealthy Chinese people have. Therefore, in their eyes, America must be a better country.

Now all this could be linked to my earlier post about Chinese culture and logic in that they only see the immediate problems and not the driving forces behind them. It could also be that the government does a pretty good job of controlling public opinion, and anti-American sentiment could only hurt the Chinese economy. Whatever the reason, my experiences in Dalian, and briefly WuXi, tell me that Americans are well loved in China. That’s over a billion people who simply don’t care about our massive wealth accumulation, dubious foreign policy decisions, or rampant consumption. Of course, it would be a bit hypocritical of them to judge us on those last two. In any case, it is comforting to me to know that at least 1/6th of the world will welcome me with open arms.

Because People’s Square is one of the more pleasant parts of Dalian and it is along my path from home to school, I find myself walking there quite often. The south side of the square is bordered by a three block long fountain that performs more or less on the hour, and few weeks ago I stopped at the fountain after it’s special weekend night performance where a crowd was lingering. Among the general activity, there was a small group of people clustered around a man painting Chinese characters on the ground with water. Once painted, the characters would gradually evaporate over the next few minutes, leaving nothing to show of the man’s work.

At first I was simply drawn photogenic quality of the scene. But as I watched and took pictures, I had a growing appreciation for the fleeting nature of the man’s work and what I took as his attitude toward it. Now, there is nothing new about making artistic statements through impermanence, however, it seems like that message is always made intentionally and the mentality behind it carries a strong tone of condescension. I often feel that those artists think they have a greater understanding of reality and see it as their role to educate everyone else about their profound revelations. This man didn’t have a message…correction: this man did not have a message that I could read. He used water as a means to publicly practice his art without causing any damage. He was just doing it because he loves calligraphy. The fleeting nature of it was simply a byproduct, and in that way, I appreciated it more.

Of course then I took some photos, which, in a way, negates that nice sentiment.

Anyway, after a few minutes, the man started to talk to me. I smiled, nodded, and thought about how I don’t know Chinese. Meanwhile, the spectacle of a foreigner talking to the calligraphy guy caused the crowed to triple in size and attentiveness. I did manage to understand ‘ming tian’ (tomorrow), ‘ba dian’ (eight o’clock), and something very similar to ‘Wo men shi peng you’ (We are friends). He also wrote me a note, however, nobody has been able to read it so far.

Thus, I found myself back at People’s Square the next night to keep my date with the Chinese Calligrapher who seemed to want to tell me something I could not understand. And with the help of a girl I had been talking to who knew some English, I learned that he was flattered I wanted to photograph his work and that he wanted to show me some more of his work at his house, which he did.

The man lived with his daughter and son-in-law in a modest apartment by Chinese standards, which means that it was essentially a small cement box. And just like western families, they continually apologized for how messy it was at the time despite its cleanliness. I loved it.  Dalian is a wonderful city in many ways, however, because it is only one hundred year old, it lacks a strong cultural identity. This man’s apartment was the first place I had been that seemed to have a unique ‘China’ characteristic. There wasn’t much to it, but it had everything a small Chinese family would need and gained a lot of charm from the calligraphy scrolls on the walls.

We only stayed for about half an hour since it was getting late and the people here tend to go to bed early, but the man gave me a piece of his work to take home and offered to teach me calligraphy if I want. It’s a tempting offer that I hope to take him up on, but I think I’ll learn some more Chinese before I do. In any case, I’m pretty happy to have met him and seen where he lives. Somehow, his welcoming attitude and desire to tell me about himself seemed like a very high compliment that made me feel much more comfortable being a foreigner here.