The Chinese don't care about your Cotton Candy

Well I officially suck at posting on my blog. It appears this will be my first posting in over two months, but I do have a valid reason for all this- my computer sucks. I was down to literally 200 MB of free space, which completely froze up my computer. I couldn't upload music or pictures or anything. There were times I needed to plug in a flash disk just to give my computer enough memory to start up. Not good. Well I finally invested in a new shiny Mac, which is awesome but has resulted in my having no money at all. Lucky for me the job market is booming and I'm sure to make that money back in no time! Hurray!

Ok enough of my rambling. I'll keep this post short and just show you all this freshly uploaded photo I took at a cotton candy stand in Ritan Park. As you can see, the man making the candy was smoking a cigg and the ash was clearly falling into the cotton candy. Maybe that's why the cotton candy was more of a gray color than the traditional bright blue? You gotta love China's sanitation standards!

China is a Pedophiles Paradise!

I like to joke that China is a pedophiles paradise. Perhaps China isn't as welcoming a utopia as one would find in Saudi Arabia or other Arab nations, but it is still a great place for pedophiles to go. Why, you ask? Because everywhere you are in China, you will see exposed baby genitals. No matter what, as hard as I try to avoid seeing them, it seems that a child's package is always in plain sight. It's like the damn kids are taunting me, just standing there as their crotchless chaps expose their "goods" to the world.

In a move that is both cheap and environmentally friendly, Chinese parents have traditionally stayed away from having their only child wear diapers and instead prefer their offspring to wear pants with a slit running down the bottom. Very stylish! This slit allows for their child to easily pop a squat and take a dump or piss wherever they please! How many times have I had the joy of watching a child pee in public, or accidentally stepped in baby shit? Countless, and I can almost guarantee I'll get another peep-show tomorrow!

As a kindergarten teacher, I was blessed with countless encounters of public urination. The school was literally 10 feet away from the playground, but instead of running inside to take a leak, these children found it more convenient to go in front of the class. Public urination wasn't restricted to the boys, as the girls seemed to enjoy it just as much. Even grosser was the fact that the teachers would often assist the children in going to the bathroom. For the younger girls, the teachers would help by holding them off the ground and keeping their legs up as they peed; for the boys, some teachers would go as far as to hold their "wangs" up to ensure the boys didn't pee on themselves. Is that really necessary? Is that even legal?

Since we're on this topic I may as well post another pleasant story concerning the children and their public urination. Once while on a field trip to a local nursing home, the teachers announced that it was time for everyone to go to the bathroom. Normally it's fine for the kids to just pee on the ground, but since we were guests at this nursing home we needed to show a little class and civility. So instead of peeing on the ground the teachers pulled out several large plastic bags and invited the children to pee into them! I stood by horrified as the boys each took turns peeing into the same pee bag, with the expected spray and dribble landing on the teachers hands. For the girls, the teachers pulled out a plastic bin lined with the plastic bag, and the girls all took turns going into that. Soon the teachers were walking around with filled bags of urine, looking for a trash can to dispose of them. Gross!

Well there you have it- if seeing exposed gentiles floats your boat, or if watching children defecate on the sidewalk is your thing, then I invite you to discover the joys of China! 北京欢迎你!

The Curious Tale of Stevie Lee

Gather round everyone as I tell you a fateful story of lies, deception, and love. Yes, I'm about two months overdue on posting this story, but I assure you it is well worth the wait! This tale occurred towards the end of January, when Estee and I were finishing our contracts with the school we worked at. It was a typical cold Beijing night as one of the new replacement teachers arrived at our apartment. She was a young Australian girl by the name of Stevie. Up until that point I was unaware that Stevie could be a girls name too, but I guess they do things differently in Australia. As I was saying, Stevie arrived one old night and it didn't take long for us to realize we had quite the catch on our hands.

Stevie was 18 years old, with jet black hair and a horribly uneducated accent (perfect for teaching children how to properly speak English). I cringed as I heard her continually say "yous" instead of "you," knowing that all the hard work I put into teaching my kids English would be undone in a few days. It was awkward having to ask her to repeat herself so often, but I had an easier time understanding Chinese cab drivers than her. Yous isn't a fucking word!

After a few days of living with us in relative silence, Stevie told Estee all about her interesting past. As it turns out, Stevie was a married woman. According to Stevie, she went on a spring break trip with some friends up to Malaysia, where she met an older gentleman of Malaysian decent. He was from a smaller village known for their bomb making trade, and they hit it off right away. At the ripe age of 17, Stevie left Australia to return to Malaysia, where she married her bomb-making lover.

Once in Malaysia, Stevie tried to begin her new life by working as an ESL teacher. But Malaysia, like the rest of the world, has standards, and they decided that an 17 year old with no College education and no previous teaching course certificates was not qualified to teach young children. Having been rejected, Stevie turned her attention to the one country without teaching standards: China. Stevie was soon on her way up to Beijing, but unfortunately her husbands Muslim heritage/bomb-making trade resulted in him being denied a visa to come to China. Stevie would be making this journey on her own... or would she?

After a few days living in Beijing, Stevie began acting very strange. She hardly ever left her room and became very quiet all the time. We thought nothing of it, until one night when my friend/roommate Russ ran out of bathroom holding a pregnancy test carton that he had fished out of the trash. Yes, Stevie had been blessed with the gift of life. Apparently she had been trying to get pregnant with her husband for a few months, but they soon gave up and assumed she couldn't get pregnant. Smart. Anyways, she was overjoyed with the news, as she explained that "having a child would almost guarantee her husband could become a citizen of Australia!" What a wonderful reason to have a baby!

Stevie was excited to get back to Australia and have her husband meet her there, as it meant she could keep a better eye on him. According to Stevie, it is acceptable in her husbands religion to have multiple partners, and so Stevie was understandable upset that he had been with other women since she left. Yes, he told Stevie that he was with other women, but an agreement had been made prior to their marriage that as long as he wasn't actually having sex with those girls, it would be OK. Who wouldn't want to have a child with this guy, huh?

The problem of moving back to Australia was that Stevie had signed a one-year contract with the kindergarten company. Stevie obviously wouldn't be able to fulfill that entire contract, since she would give birth in 9 months. And Stevie wisely decided she didn't want to give birth in China, which meant she'd have to leave the country before her 3rd trimester. Still, she feared the repercussions of explaining to the company that she would have to end her contract early. Apparently Stevie didn't believe pregnancy counted as a valid "extraneous circumstance" for ending the contract. Thus, a master escape plan was hatched. Early one morning while we all slept, Stevie packed her bags and left for the airport, fleeing the country and leaving our school without a teacher (needless to say our school flipped a shit when they found out she fled)! And that, my friends, is the curious tale of Stevie Lee.

Beijing has Proctologists

I probably shouldn't even be writing anything for this posting, as the picture itself is funnier than anything I can try to write. I came across this ad on the bus, and obviously it needed to be shared. I just wonder why they felt it necessary to include the picture of the child with its ass up in the air- are you really tying to appeal to that age demographic? Maybe its just a way to make people feel more comfortable about visiting a proctologist. After all, just look at the huge grin on that kids face! This baby is loving life, clearly revving to go! As soon as he saw those plastic gloves come out, he happily stopped his soccer game and commenced ready position! He loves his visits to the proctologist, and you should too!

Chinese Chivalry?

Yesterday I missed the chance to accomplish one of my life goals. Wow, that sentence definitely sounds more dramatic than it should… to clarify, something I have always wanted to do in my life is go up to a random crying girl and offer her a tissue. Random, I know, and not really a life goal as much as something I’d to say I’ve done. Anyways, I was on the bus yesterday and this girl got on, waved goodbye out the window and started crying. “Wow, this is my chance,” I thought as I reached into my pocket to pull out a tissue. What I failed to take into account is that Beijing buses during rush hour are so packed that it’s impossible to turn your head, let alone push your way through 50 sweaty Chinese to give a girl a tissue. So while this poor thing is bawling her eyes out, I’m stuck 5 feet away with a tissue in hand and never get close enough to give it to her.

What’s the point of this story? The point is that I was the only one in the entire bus who even considered giving the girl a tissue. And as I stood there awkwardly holding that tissue, I started thinking of how un-chivalrous the Chinese are. Now don’t get me wrong, Chinese women can be just as rude as the men here. But I find it particularly interesting watching the interactions here between men and women as compared to back in the States. If people say chivalry is dead back in America, I wonder what they’d say about it here.

For example, Chinese men will not offer the seat on the bus or subway to a woman. Just doesn’t happen. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen a group of people rush onto the bus and seen men power-walk past women to get the last seat. More interestingly, I have seen on many occasions a couple get on the bus and the man take the only available seat. This is very different from back home, where the boyfriend will always let the girl sit. Other examples? Men starting to eat their meal before the woman are served; men hogging the umbrella when it rains; and men not holding the door open for women (at least not for strangers). I’m sure I could come up with other examples, but the point is, its pretty prevalent seeing men not acting chivalrous here.

My question is, why? Does it have something to do with the Communist mindset of equality and the woman’s liberation movement it produced? Under that mindset, one could argue that if women are to be viewed as equals within the party, why should they get special privileges? Hm. On the other hand, maybe the lack of chivalry stems back to older, Confucian ideologies that placed women low on the societal totem pole. Under this logic, one could argue men lack chivalry because they lack respect towards women. For all I know, chivalry could be an entirely Western phenomenon that doesn’t have a place in China. Who the hell knows? Of course I’m not saying that all Chinese men lack chivalrous virtues, I’m simply pointing out that the Chinese have a long way to go before they reach Western standards on that front.