A Cultural Revolution Restaraunt and an all-nighter in an Internet Bar

Our group activity for the week was going to a Cultural Revolution themed restaraunt. I had no idea what to expect. We walked into a place that looking like a Chinese version of TGIF or Ruby Tuesdays, filled to the brim with Chinese kitch and the hostessed at the door greeted us with a warm "为人民服务！" (serve the people!) Dinner was traditional north easter food, which isn't terribly exciting, but tasted good, but as we finished dinner the entertainment started.

First was the auction of paintings - a guy got up on stage and started talking very fast and excitedly about his traditional paintings, what was special about them and how much he was selling them for - 30-80 dollars. It wasn't an action though because there was no bidding. Some of them were sold for a fraction of the price asked, but you'd be incredibly naive to actually bid for these things because they were the same as the paintings you'd find in any painting stall in a market: tigers, bambo, horses, confucious and flower/bird scenese. And yet the guy kept talking in his precise and cutting voice, which when amplified through the PA system was an indescribably peircing sound. After the paintings the real show started.

Out came a couple girls dressed in mao outfits, mao hats and Red Guard arm bands who started singing Cultural revolution songs. In all there were 6 performers, plus a band of 4 really putting their hearts into it, belting out songs that all come down to loving Mao Zedong, upholding ideology and the eternal revolution. I was taken aback, not expecting such a celebration of a period which has such dark memories for so many Chinese, but they didn't care and neither did the audience. Reactions ranged from clapping and singing along (all the Chinese knew all the songs - it would be like America the beautiful, this land is your land, etc. in the U.S.) to walking up close to the performers and snapping pictures with cameras, cell phones and video cameras. Perhaps the biggest contrast was going straight from the blatant capitalism of a entrepenuer using his connections at the restaraunt as an opportunity to sell cheap reproductions of the great aspects of ancient Chinese culture. Blatant capitalism mixed blatant promotion of Chinese culture mixed with passionate upholders of the great communist cultural revolution. All I can do is shake my head.

But the awesomeness didn't end there. When we got back, the question was asked, 'do you want to go bao xiu?' That is a specific word which means an all nighter in an internet bar. It is something we'd talked about before, and something that almost all male college students, as well as far too many highschool students and some girls as well do from time to time. Its extremely cheap, our 10 hours of computering cost a grand total of $1 per person, and a whole culture has developed around it. Its exciting to go with a big group of people and play net games like Counter Strike, Warcraft, etc with them (everyone plays the same game, you talk to each other both through the game and accross the aisle.

We walked into the place and saw over 300 computers (the second floor of the place had the same number), over half occupied with people playing games, surfing or watching movies. At 6 in the morning only about 20% of those people had left. At 7:00am they shut off the computers, and the large crowd of young people filed contentedly out into the morning sun, and entered the gate of the university still more or less in a group, passing the fruit sellers setting up for the morning and the old grandma's doing their shopping.

But you have to admit, getting fired up to sit in front of a computer all night is a whole lot safer than a) drinking as much as you can b) drugs c) driving cars around recklessly d) trying pick up fast girls e) most other activities that you can think of the young and reckless typically engaging in. And on top of that, to be honest with you, I get bored dancing after 45 minutes. Even the best house party has moments when you wonder if you're better off going to bed, but playing fast paced games with friends for 10 hours was one of the most uninterrupted highs i've ever had. Not something I'll repeat anytime soon, but a really fun experience. Nerdy yes, but in China, nerdy is the new cool.
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朝鲜民族村子 A Korean Minority Town [Jul. 30th, 2006|01:24 am]
Our weekend activity was a trip to a nearby rural village to spend the night, interview some people and give a big performance where every class prepared a skit, etc.

The village we went to was split in two. The half we stayed in was entirely 朝鲜族, or Korean minorities. Under the Chinese system, these classifications are fairly rigid and define special treatment under tax law and governance. On the whole, these people were extremely well off. The house we stayed in was immaculately clean, had two bedrooms and a kitchen, a nice new computer, TV, stereo, etc. The kitchen was also more like American kitchens than most of the ones I've seen in the cities. I'll try and post some pictures because it was a really interesting place. We went to a few other houses that other people were staying in and they were very similar. My feeling was this was very immaculate and high quality, even if there weren't particularly many things.

We found out, after talking to a family, that every household had at least one person and in some cases several people go to South Korea for several years to work, blue collar jobs mostly, and send the money back home and eventually return home themselves for a comfortable lifestyle. This was the first time in China I've seen people living in the countryside who were not farmers, although they had been until 10 or 15 years before.

We wandered down the streets that really felt like a Chinese version of 'The Truman Show', crossed a field and entered another part of the town which was noticably more dirty. Not only were the streets here dirt instead of concrete, the houses weren't as upkept, there were farm animals wandering around and people were working in their front yards on tractors, or whatever. These were the 汉族, or Chinese Han majority people who don't get the special treatment under the laws, don't have opportunities to go to Korea because of the language barrier, and are much more representative of Chinese farmers at large. The contrast was striking, like walking through a nice part of a city and suddenly entering a getto. We talked about it for a while, but most people (chinese - our teachers and classmates) agreed that letting the Koreans protect their culture was more important than preventing tensions from rising between ethnic groups with different, state sponsored advantages.

Other interesting conversations included sitting down for a few minutes with 4 middle aged local Chinese guys, Han majority and drinking baijiu (hard alcohol) for lunch, and being asked after a minute or so what I thought the differences were between American's conception of human rights and the Chinese notion. I was taken aback, to be sure, but tried to explain what I think American's idea is. I didn't get to finish, or even really begin any discussion because our program director (chinese) came and said something about having to leave soon. I apologized to the 4 guys and left soon after, only to find that we had another half hour. I have no idea if our program director overheard and didn't approve or if it was a coincidence.

Lots more interesting conversations, observations and rasings of the language level (this post really feels like I'm struggling to write english good), but now I have to go write my final paper for my one-on-one class, regarding western influence here, probably mostly about clothing and politics. Until next time...
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Communists! [Jul. 30th, 2006|01:10 am]
Last week during my one-on-one class I found out that my teacher is a communist party member. We were discussing the contrast between party influence in private business as opposed to state run enterprises like universities, and how the party doesn't have any good way of 'controlling' businesses in the ideological, personal way it does in traditional work units. My teacher was explaining the structure in a university, and as she got down to the lower levels she kept saying 'we' and 'I', and finally I said 'oh, so you are a member' and she said 'yes' and that was that. I'm going to quote what I wrote when I got home after class.

"Today during one on one class a bomb went off inside my head. But i have no idea what kind of bomb, its one of those situations which merely because it is entirely unknown therefore becomes scary and exciting and huge. I found out my teacher is a member of the Chinese Communist Party. This is such a simple sentence and yet my heart has been beating fast for the last hour or so. ...its definitely an intellectual thing, that suddenly I'm realizing the communist party's relationship to the people is incredibly more complex than I could have previously imagined. In my class so far we've discussed a lot of pretty pressing issues in China, from the coverup of bird flu to internet mobs attacking government officials who acted in the wrong, to the kinds of democracy and the slowness of political reform in China. In a flash I'm suddenly going over all those conversations and anylyzing them for how she reacted to my questions, what here judgements were, whether I think her answers contained much of the party line. Maybe most of all was my previous premonition that occaisionally when discussing these kinds of problems she might be going to far, telling me too much and might get in trouble for it. Suddenly I realize that she was telling me the party line, the plain and simple party position against these sorts of problems."

I then asked my roommate over dinner if he had applied to the party, and he said he already was a member. To be accepted to have to pass a test as well as have interviews, background checks, etc. He didn't seem like he really wanted to talk about it, replying with 'now you know' and then asked me if I was a member of a political party, to which I replied no, but in America it doesn't mean much, you just check a box.

But my roommate is a good guy, doesn't drink much, extremely polite, I wasn't really surprised to find he was a party member, I just hadn't considered it. The next night though, having a conversation with another Chinese roommate who is definitely a quirky and fun kid, found out that he also is a party member and a much more willing to talk about it. He said he wasn't sure, but that probably the majority of our roommates are party members. This basically put things into the perspective that I'm currently holding, that being a party member is hardly a big commitment to an ideology, but more of an honor bestowed on bright and friendly young people. Like I said, this complicates but also enlightens my ever changing view of what China is like today.