During my time in Hong Kong, I stumbled upon an interesting, but common distinction when talking with people about my time in China.  I had coffee Monday with one of my former students from SYSU who is doing her PhD in Economics at Hong Kong University.  She kept asking me about my time on the “mainland”, but when I found myself speaking with other friends they refer to my time in Linyi as time spent in “China”.  So some people use “mainland” to refer to make a geographical distinction between Hong Kong and China because they are part of the same country and others use their given names as if it’s a subtle defiance that Hong Kong is really a part of China.  It’s easy to place the line of demarcation for such usage between those who are Chinese nationals and everyone else, but I received a text message from someone from New York who said that they “saw me in China”.  I was pretty sure that it wasn’t in Linyi that this sighting took place, so I texted back and asked if he meant Hong Kong.  He did and it made me wonder not only what the heck someone from home was doing in Hong Kong the same time I was there, but also why he was referring to Hong Kong as China.  Perhaps I am old-fashioned and thus refuse to call Hong Kong “China”, even though it is technically a part of China through the whole “one country, two systems” framework.  But spend time in Hong Kong and it feels so far from China, even with all of the Mandarin on the streets these days.  Hong Kong is not China, but tell that to someone from the mainland and they will insist that it is a part of China.  I know logically that it is a part of China, but maybe it’s my Western mindset that prevents me from being able to bring myself to refer to it as such.

View of Midlevels from new IFC Mall

Then the fun began.  After boarding the plane and being seated next to a mother and her daughter who had never flown before, evidenced by the multiple pictures taken in front of the plane on the tarmac with the hands raised in the air making the famous “V” sign with their fingers that Chinese people are so fond of and their inability to operate the seat belt, I tried to settle in and prepare for take-off.  However, the mother kept speaking to me and asking me about Linyi and my time there, which was initially fine.  But then she began reading aloud random words I was texting on my phone and the names of songs on my iPod, even as I was wearing my headphones.   As our 9am departure time came and went, we were still on the tarmac.  45 minutes into waiting, the crew starts serving snacks and beverages with no explanation for the delay.  Then as quickly as the snacks appeared, the pilot made an announcement that we should prepare for take off.  We were on our way.

Now yesterday, October 1st, was National Day, which is like America’s Independence Day and results in a sort-of week-long holiday for all Chinese people.  It’s the 61st anniversary of the founding of the PRC.  In the middle of the flight I notice the crew blowing up these inflatable jumbo jets with the Shandong Airlines (the carrier I was flying) logo.  Then the stewardess announced that they were going to host a quiz show on board the plane and the prize for correct answers were these inflatable airplanes. How were they going to choose people to answer, you might be wondering?  People had to “buzz in” using their flight attendant call buttons above their seats.   It was not a perfect system because there was no way to really discern who buzzed in first.  But they started asking questions, people came up to announce their answers into the intercom so that the whole plane could here, and another one of the flight attendants was snapping pictures of it all.  Meanwhile, the pilot was also navigating some mild turbulence that precipitated turning on the “Fasten Seatbelt” sign, which was ignored by everyone on board.

We finally arrive at Guangzhou and being in Baiyun airport felt like civilization.  I never felt this way when I was living there, but after three weeks in Linyi, I was looking at everything with different eyes.  I had about an hour and a half to spare, so I checked in and met up with my friend Michael at one of the many Starbucks in Tianhe.  What I noticed on the drive in was how developed the city seemed and also the lower number of Chinese brand automobiles, which were far more common in Linyi because they tend to be cheaper. It answered my question about whether Chinese autos were starter cars and then people would trade up when they made more money.  The city has also undergone a massive development boom in the year plus that I was gone because the city is hosting the 2010 Asia Games this December, which like every other big sporting or cultural event held in China, means that the host city spends billions of dollars on infrastructure and other improvements.  Multiple subway lines were slated to open in the common weeks, new hotels and malls were built, and entire traffic patters were changed, including the introduction of a special bus lane that is supposed to act like a bus-type train unencumbered by auto traffic.  Tianhe is the expat hang-out of GZ and where most of the nice shopping is aggregated.  I did not recognize the neighborhood.  New Marriotts and Sheratons were being built.  Entirely new wings on already large malls were going up and stores like H&M were opening.  It appeared that GZ had “arrived”.  It was also really nice to see my friend Michael, who is American and finishing up his masters in IR at SYSU, the university where I taught.  Then I raced back to the airport and made my 25 minute flight to Hong Kong with minutes to spare.

Arriving in Hong Kong last night was like a homecoming.  I’ve spent so much time here over the years, including two years after college and many visits while living in GZ, that this place is so familiar to me.  I just get off the plane and I know what to do and where to go.  The airport is a joy, the express train into the city is easy and quick, and the city itself is just so well-run.  I went from Linyi to Hong Kong in the course of a day and it was a little bit of culture shock, but not in a bad way.  It was just a study in the different levels of development, crammed into the course of a day.  It also makes me wonder what happens to places like Linyi and do they become Guangzhou one day or even Hong Kong, or are they destined for a certain path because of circumstances.  Hong Kong is going to be a nice transition for returning to New York next Tuesday, but I also have my own complicated feelings about this city.  Perhaps one can extend the metaphor of my own feelings towards Hong Kong to how the mainland may feel about Hong Kong.  There is something alluring about the city, but it’s not necessarily a comfortable relationship because there is also something not quite real about this place, but it’s something I will continue to explore while I am here.  Suffice it to say, I made it safe and sound and now I am looking forward to catching up with some old friends and visit some old haunts.

- Taught what is normally a semester-long class about U.S. business law to 113 college juniors;
- Stopped traffic on main roads because of my “black” skin, which is just my residual summer tan;
- Went to Qingdao and back (twice);
- Felt like I have ridden with every cab driver in Linyi;
- Ate Sichuan (川菜) food almost every other day;
- Saw whole buildings erected:
- Was told repeatedly that I do not look 31, but rather 25 (hard to know what the basis is for these comments);
- Was told that my female students all think I have a “strong” body
- Learned a bit more about what it’s like to live in a third-tier city.

Those are just some of the highlights of my time here, with others captured in the blog and others surely to come out in the aftermath.  One of the things you have seen me wrestle with while being here is how a city of 11 million people and the largest in Shandong province can feel so provincial.  As I mentioned above, Linyi is a third-tier city as has been designated by the government.  Guangzhou, along with Shanghai, Beijing, and some others are first-tier.  I am not sure what criteria the government uses to distinguish cities of different tiers, but I find referring to the fast food hierarchy helps.  It seems that third-tier cities earn their status along with a McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and KFC.  Sometimes there are multiple branches of these restaurants.  Second-tier cities add Starbucks to their mix.  Then you start getting other chains from around the world once you move up to first-tier status.  I had dinner with the Brazilians the other night and they described the city as “not civilized”, which I think is unfair.  But it does have a feeling that while there is a lot of mony floating around, it is still a city in the middle of a big transition.  After three weeks, I want to add my thoughts to the mix on why large cities like Linyi and others around China that would be some of the largest cities in any other country feel so much more like a village.  I think it’s diversity, but not diversity as we know it in the West.  It’s just about exposure to foreign ideas and influences to show the people here that there is a world beyond Linyi.

Every cab driver I have asked is from Linyi.  The clear majority of the 40,000  students at Linyi Normal, where I taught, are from the city.  While there are some foreign professors like myself and a smattering of students studying Chinese from other countries, these populations are not sizeable enough to influence local residents.  The foreigners who also tend to come here seem to self-segregate in the extreme sense, being mainly confined to the university grounds.  Aside from planned meetings with the Brazilians, I think I have had one indirect run-in here with someone who was not Chinese and that was from the window of a cab when I saw some Caucasian woman riding by on her scooter.  I’ m not saying an abundance of foreigners is a good thing, but the ideas that come with people from different backgrounds help change the perceptions of people on the street.  It’s partly why I am stared at here, but no one could give a damn what I was doing while I lived in Guangzhou.  It’s the lack of openness or just the lack of different ideas that makes the city seem small.  As was pointed out by a very intelligent commenter on a previous post, the hukou system that requires people to register in the towns they are from and makes moving to other cities difficult, definitely compounds the problem.  But many people from here want to stay here and have no desire to venture forth to see the rest of the country.  This contrasts with my students at SYSU who were trying to move to Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and other places further afield.  So perhaps it’s the combination of a lack of outside influences and the lack of a desire to experience other cultures that makes this city of 11 million feel much smaller than it really is.  As I said at the outset, it’s only my opinion and I would love to hear from other who have lived and visited other “country cities” in China where it’s a large city, but feels like a small village.

It’s been an interesting three weeks and I have learned a lot from living in a different part of the country for a short time.  It’s been hard at times being so isolated, but it’s also been educational to experience lecturing students, building some semblance of a life here, and just letting China wash over me in the only way you really can let it.

Now it’s off to Hong Kong for a quick jaunt and then back to New York.

Before lunch, Karen and I were sitting in my office talking about family and being gay in China.  To be fair, I met up with the Brazilian professor last night and while he has been quite coy about his own sexuality, he told me that he had a conversation with Karen a few months ago about gay people in China and her thoughts on the subject.  She had apparently told him that she thought that there were no gay people in China and that she knows for sure that there are no gay people in her hometown of Jinan.  But her dad, who is a civil servant in the local government, told her that he worked with a lesbian and was surprisingly in the know about the gay bars of Jinan.  Such a revelation forced Karen to revise her view on no gay people in Jinan, let alone China. 

So with this knowledge, we began talking about how chummy some of the boys in my class scene and I asked her why they were so touchy with each other.   She quickly asserted that they were not “gays” and that there were no gay people in Chine.  She then followed up with her opinion that being gay is a “sickness” and “disgusting”.  I just looked on bemused and let her continue speaking.  She reiterated that no gay people live in China because Chinese culture requires people to get married and have children.  I asked her how that was logical, especially if being gay was not a choice, but a part of who you are when you are born.  I also asked her how she could assert that no Chinese people are gay when she does not know all 1.4 billion Chinese people.  It was at that point that she recanted and said that maybe there were Chinese people in he big cities, but none at the university because all the boys talk about finding “beautiful girlfriends”.  We continued speaking about the tension in Chinese culture of pleasing ones parents and being true to oneself and how difficult that is and I told her it’s just as difficult to come out to ones parents in the States because more often than not it feels like a disappointment to them when you tell them that you are gay.  However, above all else, I told her that I believe parents in the States want their children to be happy and if coming out is part of them being happy, then so be it.   From there the conversation morphed into one about pleasing parents and not making them upset.  Karen, as an only child, is very obedient and while she recognizes her own desires, she has a deep-set desire to make her parents happy.  Then it came out in the form of two secrets why she is so willing to sacrifice herself for her parents, beyond the normal Chinese cultural limitations – first when she was ten, she was nearly crippled when she was hit by a car while on her mom’s bicycle and then a year ago, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor that required a two-week trip to Shanghai for surgery costing RMB3 million (approximately US$450,000) without any sort of insurance.  She has been fortunate enough to survive not one, but two nearly life-threatening incidents and it’s because of the love and support of her parents, which as children of parents, we should all recognize and be grateful for, but it’s created such a hold on her life that she is not willing to upset her parents by voicing any of her desires.  Of course all parent-child relationships are such private affairs that I would never weigh in on anyone else’s relationship with their parents, so it’s hard for me to say much more than “whoa” after hearing that story.

What is interesting to me after that discussion is that Karen showed no interest in why I was asking about gay people in China or what it was like to be gay in the U.S., or the more extreme conclusion that perhaps I was gay.  I didn’t expect her to ask me that, though Chinese students have asked me more invasive questions in the past.  But it was her lack of curiosity combined with such forceful and harsh opinions on the topic.  She said it multiple times that being gay is a sickness that some people have and that she thought it was disgusting and immoral, but with those strong opinions was no desire to engage me on my thoughts on the matter.   Just very curious to me.  It’s also not like I came out to her, which I would have done if prompted, but I am still the professor and she is my student and there are three classes left, so that line must be maintained.

Lunch itself was very pleasant and it was nice to talk to the guys in my class.  They asked me why I was interested in China and I told them it was something I never grew bored with because it was always changing.  I then asked them if they thought the changes taking place here were happening to quickly or if they were scared of all of the changes.  I received mixed answers.  With a mischievous grin on his face, Singer said it was fun and exciting.  Bob was more thoughtful and said it was scary and that he wished sometimes things would move a little more slowly, which elicited strange looks from his tablemates.  It was at that point that I had to meet the driver to head back to the hotel, but it was the tip of why may have been an interesting conversation and makes me think about what the next generation thinks about the changes taking place and whether they think Chinese culture is immutable.  Of course to a Chinese history student, it’s clear the culture is changing with the massive economic and social changes of the last 30 years, but the strong ties to family have remained in place more than such upheaval could have potentially left them.  Karen made a comment about Chinese culture changing, but it being very slow and she is perhaps more right than others may think.  As always, it’s going to be interesting to see what happens with the next generation and whether openness and tolerance will become a part of the Chinese cultural fabric as the country continues to open up to outside influences.

So as I said, this blog was supposed to be my own “define the relationship” or “dtr” with China and it still is, but I feel that this three-week stint here in Linyi has thrown that conversation into sharper relief.  When I came back from GZ last year, old and new friends alike, upon hearing about my time spent in China or my long-standing interest in the country, would eventually ask if I could ever see myself living here long-term.  After some reflection, I usually told them no and then qualified that never is a tough word to stand behind and that it might be different if I was at a different personal stage in my life.  If the person on the other end of this conversation cared to hear more, I would go into how much I love China on an intellectual/professional/academic level, but that it was really hard on my personally.  Even being back in China for this short period, I am continually stimulated on a mental/academic/dorky level that was a constant during my year in GZ.  However, the personal side of spending time here is difficult.  Whether it’s the inability to actualize the fact that I am gay through going out (my friend, Michael, and I tried to find the gay bar in Qingdao only to discover that the entire number block where it was supposed to be located did not exist, kind of like platform 9-3/4 in Harry Potter, except we did not know the secret way in), dating, or just telling people and feeling a part of community of like-minded people to being far away from my friends and family, who I seem to miss more and more the older I get.  I always qualify that if I was lucky enough to find a partner who was willing to live in China for a few years, I might be able to do it, but it’s not a place I see myself settling down.  I guess that is where my personal quest diverges from my academic/professional interests, the desire to put down roots and build a life.  China is amazing on so many levels and it twists and turns my brain in a way that nothing else really has, but it has not captured my heart in a way that would make me want to give up building a life in the Stats.  I am still trying to find that happy medium and it’s definitely an ongoing dialogue, but this time around has highlighted just how important the personal relationships in my life are.  No matter how much time I spend here or how familiar I am with customs, language, or geography, I am an outsider.  When I speak a few words of Mandarin, I inevitably get told how wonderful my Chinese is when I know that it’s not.  When I go running at the gym, people will stand on the treadmill next to me and just stare while sweat is pouring off my body.  When I have conversations with those people who speak English, I am reminded of my country’s faults and how great their television shows and movies are.  When I stand in front of my students, they titter about how ‘handsome” or “strong” I am, not about how interested they are in the subject matter I am teaching them.  Try as I might, I cannot shed my outsider status.  Any deeper level of knowledge about China is met with surprise and wonderment because how could an American possibly know what is happening in China.  The recent Japanese capturing of the Chinese fishing boat capital was all over the American newspapers and there was an article in Chinese posted on the board in one of the classrooms.  My student was amazed that I knew anything about and then proceeded to lecture me about how Japan does not respect Chinese history or its people and that ALL Chinese people hate Japanese people.  Oh how I missed the generalizations.

So this post is not a rant, but more of my own dialogue about my ongoing and changing relationship with China.  Like most relationships, it can be both frustrating and rewarding at the same time and it should always be evolving.  I am sure that anyone who has lived in another country for an extended period of time, especially by yourself, has had a dialogue similar to this. Perhaps part of it is loneliness of being so far from any support network, something I was able to build in GZ.  Perhaps part of it is the wisdom that is supposed to come with age, which maybe I am finally starting to see the edges of  as I get older and hopefully a little bit wiser.  Whatever it is, stay tuned because this dialogue is not over since China always seems to have a way to pull me back in.  Though if you ask me the question whether I see myself here long-term, the answer is probably going to be the same long, drawn-out ramble about my personal desires, which are not really fulfilled here, but intellectual fascination with this place.  That has not changed.  What may be changing is the balance between those desires and the fascination with this crazy country.

All of these things happened on today’s trip, so by the time we arrived at the Sifang (四方) bus station, I was truly alone on the bus.  Aside from dinner tonight at a great, what else, a Sichuan restaurant, I was able to avoid the mass chaos that seems to typify most Chinese urban experiences.  I arrived at my hotel where I stayed last weekend and was greeted by Hattie, whose friend thinks I am so handsome.  She gave me some moon cakes and fresh fruit as a gift for the mid-Autumn festival and escorted me to my room, which only made me feel slightly uncomfortable.

After dinner this evening, I decided to tap into my Jersey roots and walk two malls that are a short distance from my hotel and close to the Olympic sailing center along the water.  I visited Hisense Plaza (海信广成), which is home to really high-end brands like Gucci and Hermes, and Marine City (百丽广成), which houses a Uniqlo, Zara, H&M, Muji, Dairy Queen, Sephora, and a Watsons (a Duane Reade-esque drugstore based from Hong Kong).  It felt a little like home and was very quiet, which was fine by me, but so unlike the China I have come to know and love.  I know it’s a holiday, but one thing I have learned during my time spent here is that Chinese people use any holiday as another excuse to go shopping.  The busiest days of the year at the supermarket tend to be holidays, which I learned the hard way with hour-long queues at the registers and throngs of people making even the quickest of shopping trips nearly impossible to complete.  But today was one of those days where the mass of humanity that is China’s 1.3 billion people did not cross my path, which so rarely happens and which is why I do not feel guilty for indulging in it.  Perpetuating that feeling may have something to do with Qingdao, which is home to only eight million people, most of whom live outside of the central business district where I am staying.  But I am not going to be doing much more sightseeing since I did most of it last weekend and I must prepare my final exam and review materials for my students.  I am going to be parked in Starbucks most of the day tomorrow, which means you can expect a blog post courtesy of Starbucks’ free wireless.