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[JOURNAL ENTRY, JUNE 2005:]

I will be leaving for America in a week. It seems appropriate, therefore, to try and summarize my experiences in China before I go. First, I was never Marco Polo. I’m not a great explorer by nature. My stomach turns over at the sight of dead rabbits and chickens hanging up in the windows of restaurants. I’m good at meeting new people and asking questions and trying to get a sense of what’s meaningful to them. But if you ask me to go on a thousand mile journey through the Himalayas to photograph the elusive Yeti, I’m probably going to ask if there’s a Ramada Inn along the way.

So I’m a very, very lucky man to have spent this last few months in the East. You cannot help but be changed by such an experience. I’ve seen some of the loveliest and most magnificent places on the planet. I’ve spoken to people who were crushed—and others who endured—Mao’s “Cultural Revolution,” surely one of the worst excuses for exercising ruthless and brutal power over the masses that I’ve ever heard or read about. I’ve spoken to people whose grandmothers and grandfathers survived torture, rape, and execution at the hands of the Japanese. I’ve spoken to Tibetan people whose temples and priests were destroyed because they represented “non-right” thinking. I’ve met people whose families had everything and lost it—and people whose families have had virtually nothing for untold generations. I’ve also spoken to teenaged kids here who know little about the real events in their country of the past 50 years—but know everything about Gap and Nike products. My white face has given me a cache here that I would never have in my own country. I have been allowed into stores when they were not yet opened for the day. (I didn’t know—I just pushed my way in and they let me.) I’ve been given special courtesies in bars, restaurants, and other public places; eagerly chatted with by strangers in parks and subways. Partly this is because I am a somewhat “exotic” species here. Partly it’s because everyone assumes that as an American I must be fabulously wealthy.

And by local standards, of course, I am very well off.

For those who are not wealthy—and that is almost everyone reading this—it’s an interesting experience when people act as if serving and pleasing you gives them their utmost joy in life. Being perceived as wealthy is, I’ve learned, a pleasant but pernicious trap. If you’re not careful, a good part of the world disappears from your personal frame of reference, and all the servers and beggars and shop people simply blur into one faceless mass of Them. Their individuality, their human force as people with lives as deep or rich or meaningful as your own, starts to dim. You become used to true poverty, or at least no longer horrified by the sight of it. The beggars in the streets lying face-down across your path with their cups stretched out imploringly no longer register as a particularly pathetic sight. They are part of the landscape—not a nice or friendly part, but simply there, like an empty can rolling in the gutter. If this sounds heartless, then come here for nearly a year. You’ll see what I mean.

I’ve come to see what it’s like to live with privilege but without democracy. In China, existence is mediated by personal relationships and then by relationships to the central government. In a way, maintaining a relationship to the Communist Party is the relationship for some people. The better students, the more successful professionals and business people, and of course those who simply have friends in the right places, have the best chance of being accepted into the Party. According to our friends—some of whom joined during their idealistic youth, and are now lifelong “members” no matter what their current convictions—affiliation with the Party allows you first crack at promotions at work, delightful perks for travel, good apartments, and many other desirables. It also allows you something more ephemeral, but no less desirable: the chance to exercise a moral superiority over your peers. Imagine being a mediocre doctor or teacher, but still having the clout—sanctioned by the government—to tell coworkers that they are drifting from the Righteous Way. Indeed, this seems to be the source of some of the “perks”: nervous colleagues seeking to keep on your good side. It’s like being the favorite nephew or niece of the Big Boss, and having outrageous power because of that relationship. There are a lot of favorite nephews and nieces in China. Not so different from the West, actually. But here, there is not even the pretence of democracy.

When I came here, I was shocked by my reaction to so much that was different. For one thing, I was surprised to learn that I did feel alienated by being one of the few Westerners I saw on the streets. In the first few weeks, I searched for Western faces in the crowd in the way that a child searches for his parents when he’s afraid that he’s become lost at the fair. The sight of faces that reminded me of my own comforted me. Eventually that passed. Now I could care less about the Westerners I see walking around. To the contrary, in fact: The sight of them now mildly distresses me. I feel that they are interlopers on my turf—strangers with no sense of where they are or what they’ve wandered into. I don’t want them to change “my China.”

I will miss my life here, far more than I could have imagined ten short months ago. To my great surprise, I am leaving family.

Donald Gallinger is author of the novel The Master Planets

Memoirs of China: The Price of Isolationism

[JOURNAL ENTRY, MAY 2005:]

I worry about America. I read the Internet news every day, and watch the developments of a country aimlessly throwing its freedoms away. I think about my students back home, and their parents, and what seem to be the truly important things in their lives. I think about the casual, blatant disregard we have for education… the nonsense we fill our children’s heads with… our fascination
with garbage.

People here in China think of America with awe.

There is obscenity in the way we have taken the best of our country for granted. You can see the emerging “globalization” of the economy taking place in China. How long, I wonder, before all those shouting, cursing kids in America and their equally deluded parents realize that the world is closing in upon them? How long before they realize that simply being born in America will mean nothing unless they take care of the society they are born into?

Here’s something to think about: It is extremely pleasant to live in a place where people are polite. Do you think that’s a minor issue? Come on over here. You’ll see what I mean. I wish every American could visit China. They’d go back with a very different attitude about what’s important in life.

Donald Gallinger is author of the novel The Master Planets

Memoirs of China: Shanghai Spring

[JOURNAL ENTRY, MAY 2005:]

Shanghai Spring

The weather is changing here in Shanghai. From our balcony overlooking the busy intersection of Heng Shan and Gao An Roads in the French Concession, you can see the vendors and peddlers setting up their fruit stands. This is good cocktail weather, as they say, and a lovely place to sit and watch an exotic part of the world go by. The locals tell us that soon the humidity will drift in off the East China Sea, and Shanghai will swelter in tropical heat until next September.

We’ve made a lot of friends in this city, and it seems that we’re making more every day. Last night our friends, Nicholas and Liu Yan, took us to Yake Xi, a famous restaurant specializing in the cuisine of Northwestern China. You forget sometimes how big China is—and how many different ethnic groups comprise the country’s population. Yake Xi is owned by Chinese who are Muslims. In their dress, music, and cuisine, they are a strange hybrid of Asians and Middle-Easterners. Their musical instruments sound more Arabic than Chinese—even a bit like the Russian balalaikas. Their robes are certainly Arabic in design and color. The girls belly dance. At one point during dinner I turned to Liu Yan, our Chinese doctor friend, and asked her, somewhat incredulous: “These belly dancing girls are really Chinese? This is not a put-on?” Liu Yan laughed and assured me that these people were really Chinese, and yes, indeed, belly dancing was part of their cultural tradition.

The food was superb—spicy lamb dishes and good bread. You forget how good bread can taste when you’ve been living in China for a while. Of course, we also had many bottles of good, Harbin beer (Harbin is a large, beautiful city in the northeastern corner of China, closer to Korea. Harbin is famous for its ice-sculptures, its beer, and its rather ferocious people.) Later in the evening, the belly dancer girl invited all of us up to the stage to join her. The Chinese customers cheered us on as we flapped our arms and legs on stage. (The Chinese are generally very good sports about these sorts of things.)

Liu Yan is not quite certified as a physician. She graduates with her M.D. degree in June. For the next several years, Liu Yan stands to earn about 2000 yuan a month as a doctor—that’s around $250 U.S. dollars per month. Her present boss, a very experienced doctor and the head of the radiology department at her hospital, clocks in at an astounding 8000 yuan a month, or about $1000 U.S. dollars. That’s the way it is in China. People may study for years and years, and make very little money.

Going to school here really is a privilege. Up to about age fifteen, kids in China have mandatory education—after that, there are fees to attend school. Everyone gets an “identity” card when they are born, and this card identifies the province they were born in, and subsequently what services they can expect to receive from that province. Should you move to another province, certain benefits stop, and you must pay for those services out of your own pocket. Education is a good example. There are a lot of country families—traditionally called “peasants,” about 85% of China’s population—who have moved to Shanghai to take advantage of the opportunities there. Their kids don’t go to school—their families can’t afford the fees.

Donald Gallinger is author of the novel The Master Planets

Memoirs of China: Worst Dates...

[JOURNAL ENTRY, MAY 2005:]

We have a good friend named Nancy. She’s an ethnic Chinese girl who grew up in Indonesia. She tells us that the Chinese are hated in Indonesia. A few nights ago, Nancy was out “clubbing” with her Chinese and Western girl friends, and they all got to talking about their worst dates. Nancy related to us the story she told her friends that night. Her date, a Chinese guy, picks her up in an immaculately clean car. It is so clean that’s she’s almost afraid to put her shoes down on the car’s floor. The guy is good-looking and polite, and Nancy is suitably impressed. He takes her to a nice restaurant, and graciously dishes out food for her. She’s still impressed. Then the guy starts to talk about something that doesn’t interest Nancy. He talks and talks, and before you know it, they’ve almost missed the movie they were supposed to see that evening. Nancy doesn’t really care about the movie, and she lets the guy know that it’s not a big deal to her if they miss it. But the guy is insistent—he really wants to see the movie. So they leave the restaurant. On the sidewalk, THE GUY SUDDENLY BEGINS TO RUN! HE’S DESPERATE TO SEE THE MOVIE! He’s a fairly tall guy with long legs, and soon he’s really outdistancing Nancy. He’s leaving her in the dust on this mission to get to the movie theater. Nancy tries hard to catch up—she’s running as hard as she can—but she just can’t make it. Eventually, she finds him in the movie theater.

Of course, she decides never to see this guy again. But afterward she wondered: Why did I run to catch up with this guy?

Donald Gallinger is author of the novel The Master Planets

Memoirs of China: The Strange Influence of SEX AND THE CITY Upon Chinese Girls…

[JOURNAL ENTRY, MAY 2005:]

Apparently, many Chinese people learn English from watching DVDs. In fact, it’s incredible how well some Chinese people speak English just from watching American movies and television shows. But there are inherent cultural problems in this form of language instruction.

For example, about three hundred million young Chinese women know the romantic ups and downs of those four urban shoe fetishists in Sex and the City. Now, these Chinese women know that the show is supposed to be a sort of joke, and you’re not really supposed to take the female characters too seriously. Still, they pick up things from the show that they don’t completely understand. Our Mandarin teacher, Leona, a young woman of twenty-five, told us that she learned a great deal of her English from Sex and the City. Her favorite English word, she told us, is “abso-fucking-lutely.” Another friend of ours, Sunny, an ethnic Korean girl from the north of China, told us that she loved a bit of dialogue from the show when someone asked one of the girls what she did the night before. The girl’s response: “I got laid.” So now Sunny goes around to clubs and whenever anyone asks her what she did last night, she says, “I got laid.”

Donald Gallinger is author of the novel The Master Planets

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