The Monkey Kings 美猴王

In our last week in Suzhou, right before Spring Festival, the monkey royalty was visited by my queen’s mother and sister. We went to the Master of the Nets Garden (网师园) and Shan Tang Street (山塘街), both beautiful places, took countless photos and left for Fuzhou.

We spent Spring Festival in Fuzhou, the Monkey Queen’s hometown, listening to firecrackers (sometimes at 4 in the morning and usually giving me a headache), giving money (红包) to kids and relaxing. Next, we are off to Yunnan, and after that, Canada once again.

Having left Suzhou, I am discontinuing this blog. If you still want to hear from me, you can follow me on my old blog, menso.wordpress.com. I may still use this blog for things such as business, putting in links and advertisements, but otherwise, the tales of the Monkey Kings are at an end. Thank you for reading.

Every time I meet a stranger in China, he or she asks me what country I am from. The general assumption is that all white people are from the United States or England (since these are the only three countries outside China—and I could not possibly be from Japan). But they still ask if which of those two I am from. I tell them to keep guessing. And I usually lie to them.

The two times I was asked yesterday are good examples. A young guy at Old Uncle（老娘叔）asked the Monkey Kings of Old in English where we were from and instead of just asking the question, he felt it necessary to name countries until he got the right one. The first thing he asked was, “are you from England or Germany?” I said, “are those my only two options?”

He continued, “maybe you are from the United States?” I said no. He said, “Canada or Australia?” And before I said anything he said “no, I don’t think so.” I told him I was from Suzhou, and that I come from old Suzhou, from Suzhou when it started 5000 years ago. He got a kick out of that. Eventually, instead of insisting on guessing or just asking “so?”, he got up and left. Many Chinese people are very curious but they do not go to great lengths to satisfy their curiosity. The poor young man will never know the truth.

I get asked these questions every day, and it gets annoying, so I need to have fun or else I will go crazy. Later, as we were buying vegetables on the street outside my building, two old men were staring at us and asking about us to each other and wondering where we were from. Eventually, I said to them, “我是中国人！你们是哪国家的？” (”I am Chinese! Where are YOU from?”) And that held them for a minute or two. Great fun.

There is something happening in Suzhou. When we came to Suzhou seven months ago, when we came back from work we would usually see one or two old people begging at the bus stop. They are annoying, especially to foreigners (being white is being loaded, of course), but they do not do any harm. We work around one of the main centres of Suzhou, Guan Qian Street (观前街东) and a lot of Chinese people give beggars money there. And if my economics is right, that is the reason there are so many more beggars there now.

It seems strange to think that, in just half a year, there would be an explosion in begging. There were two or three beggars before; now it is difficult to count them. They have spread out: at first one would come to the bus stop and beg and that was it; now they are on both sides of the street, some sitting, some looking scruffy but happy, some looking pathetic, some with children. At the intersection near the train station one used to see one beggar walking among cars with a cup, knocking on windows. Now there are several old men and women carrying infants. Where did all these people come from? Where are their families? And how much money are they really making?

There are even some who look like students and who write something in chalk on the sidewalk, then sit, looking pathetic, in front of what they wrote. They do not look poor or maltreated, they simply sit there with their heads down. Another blogger, who was passing through Suzhou, noticed the phenomenon as well.

I could not find any information about beggars in Suzhou except from government controlled newspapers but my guess is that they are being drawn by kindly but ignorant locals and tourists. They are made to feel sorry for those who put on a sad face and, because they are nouveau riche, the locals feel guilty and give them things. My guess is that these beggars make as much or more than some of the hard working people on bicycles carrying wood and metal or the ones with wheelbarrows carrying garbage around.

What to do? Well I certainly do not like the idea that the police should arrest them or push them around. Unfortunately, being the easiest solution it is probably the one for which the government will opt. But I suggest that the people simply stop giving money to them. When you do not give beggars money, they find other ways to survive. Perhaps there could be some kind of donation-funded homeless shelters. If we could make people realise that there are better charities to give to, they might be tempted to try them. The problem is that, in China, you could not possibly start such a charity without the big hand of the government in it. They would insist on funding and controlling it, and turning it political. And if you think that is good, perhaps you should ask why this very powerful government has not actually eliminated poverty.

Do not expect a real solution any time soon. Until it comes, I will give my money to charities that I trust and not to people on the street I do not.

Today Joy 女王 and Chris 猴王 went to Taihu Lake (太湖) and West Mountain Island (西山岛) and ate jumping shrimp.

First we went to a long, wooden pier that leads out over the lake. You can see big schools of tiny fish among the seaweed in the calm lake water.

For lunch, we drove by a number of 农家, farmer’s homes that are partly converted into restaurants. There were about six of them by the road, and being such a quiet day, one farmer’s wife was outside each house frantically beckoning us to her restaurant. We ate big platefuls of delicious seafood, including one dish of shrimp that were still alive! They were cooked but not so cooked that they actually died. The shrimp were semi transparent and soaked in a liqueur that drugged them long enough that they more or less stopped moving after a few minutes. At first of course I was wary, but they turned out to taste really good.

I also ate 螺, which is a kind of snail I ate several times at Joy’s house in Fujian. They don’t have a lot of taste but they come in a really good sauce. To eat them, you take a toothpick, stick it in and slowly pull the snail out of its spiral shell. If you are skilled enough and in a hurry you can eat about ten in a minute. At that rate it would take you an hour to fill up on them.

After lunch, we went to Shigong Hill (石宫山), a park by the lake with a small Buddhist temple and a playground. We went in the temple and saw the four god kings that you see when you go to most Buddhist temples in China, and big Buddha and his big belly. In the yard was a number of stumps for those training in kung fu to step on. You are supposed to close your eyes and balance or walk from one to another. I could do it a little but I think I need more practice. The playground had old swings and some rope things that are hard to cross but worth the exercise.

And on the way home, we looked at some expensive villas that are for rent and for sale. Some of them are empty and can be rented by the night, so we thought it would be a great idea to rent one for Christmas and have our friends come for a party. We will ask our friends (contact me if you want to come!) and have a big Christmas party at Taihu! 好兴奋啊！

A Chinese wife is like a fortune cookie: sweet and cute on the outside but on the inside they have something that can change the direction of your life.

Joy and I have been together for a year and a half now. That means a year and a half of being called 老公 (husband), a year and a half of hugs that cut off the circulation, and significantly, a year and a half of little fluffy things in the shapes of animals for countless purposes. These cute things have, more than anything, made me realise how differently we think.

You see, I have a habit of using logic to make my decisions and she has a habit of picking the cutest thing off the shelf whether she needs it or not. “Look how cute this is! 老公, can we buy it?” “We already have a garden hose, Joy.” But this cuteness spills over into everything, and she gives me presents like I have never had before.

Differences in thinking are not a problem. The key to any relationship is common values. Urban Canadians are used to the idea of a white man and an Asian woman getting together, but most Chinese people we know have trouble fathoming it. They ask questions like, don’t you two have unsurmountable cultural barriers? Don’t you have continual miscommunications? How is it that two people of such different backgrounds can get together? The answer is always no. As differently as we think at times, we share our most important values. We have even decided how many kids we would like and what sex we want them to be (but I’m not going to tell you!).

In fact, we agree on so many things I do not think of her as being from a different culture. I think of her as family. So does the rest of my family, and none of them except my dad, who came to China for the wedding, has met her.

At the wedding, I met Joy’s family. I had heard of large Chinese extended families but I had yet to see one. They filled the conference hall. I have trouble using up all my fingers when counting the people in my family; Joy’s must number at least two hundred. They thought that, being a Canadian, I was surely wealthy, and so did not need any 红包 (lucky money), so I missed out on that tradition. But I do not get angry at the big things, only the little ones. And Joy is there to put up with me every time.

My mother, who remember has not met her yet, says that Joy must be very easy going to put up with a strong minded brute like me. I have tested this hypothesis every day we have been together. The yin to my yang, whenever I get angry, she smiles and speaks softly. When I get angry at her, she laughs. When I growl like a bear I’m truly angry, and she cracks up.

How has Joy changed the direction of my life? I have another reason to learn more about China and learn more Chinese. Now I can communicate with my extended family. If not for my wife, I would not be bringing China with me when I left. But because of Joy, I will always have a connection to this country, and always return to spend time with my Chinese family. I can’t wait to see my fortune cookie wife’s big bright eyes when we come back for Chinese New Year.

China is a competitive place. Industrialised China may just be the most competitive place in the world. I’m not sure. But when it comes to learning English, some Chinese people are so desperate to practice that they will talk to any white person they can find.

Of course, not all white people speak English as a native language (in fact, most don’t), but most white people in China know some English. But most people in China do not know that. Many Chinese people will walk up to a white person and smile and begin speaking English. Some foreigners love this about China. It is a great way to make friends if you are open to it. For those who are not, it is a nuisance.

Since learning English is a big way for a Chinese person’s career to advance, and since China is so competitive, Chinese people will use you to speak English. Of course, they would not claim to be doing so. They would say, I like foreigners, or I am just very friendly. The truth is that you are their teacher, and their being friendly is your payment. This is the part I resent. Nothing is free, not in China, not anywhere. But if you are not equally friendly, people push and push, as if to force you to speak to them. As disinterested as you appear, by putting on headphones, reading a book, looking out the window, talking to your friend, they will talk to you.

I have solved this problem for myself, on the advice of the Monkey Queen. When people I do not know come up to me, I tell them, in Chinese, that with Chinese people I do not know, I only speak Chinese. That way, I am the one getting something out of our conversation as well.

Sadly, it is not as easy as that. There is a young man, about 17 years old, in Suzhou who apparently spends his time looking for white people to talk to. I am not the only one who knows of this boy. Whenever he sees you, he will approach you and speak in a strange kind of monotone English. His English is very good but he is strange and frightening. He repeats that he likes foreigners and wants (or expects) you to come with him and chat. I feel bad for him because it is likely he has some mental problems. He may have had a nervous breakdown, as many Chinese students do due to the pressure of exams at the end of high school. I can find no other explanation why he spends so much time around tourist areas, and pushes so hard to talk to you, as if begging, and yet he clearly has a good education.

Is it possible they are only being friendly and nothing more? Perhaps, but I strongly dislike being picked out of a crowd for my race. Either way, the likely explanation is that some Chinese people think the key to getting ahead is to have excellent English and the key to learning English is to speak to every foreigner they find on the street. Competition has pushed Chinese society to this point.

China is a funny place. Even (or especially) the things that I like are funny.

It was my birthday last week. The Monkey Queen and her unpredictable sense of humour bought me a tube of Darlie, the black guy toothpaste. It says right on the tube, “黑人牙膏”, black man toothpaste. It is a whitening toothpaste. The idea is that black people have very white teeth, so you, a Chinese person, can have white teeth too.

Far be it from me to comment on the cleanliness of Chinese teeth, but I really wonder if Chinese people think black people’s teeth are whiter, or if they realise that colours are colours in as much as they are placed next to other colours, giving a black man’s teeth an equal chance of being white as a Chinese man’s. I also wonder if this, or any other whitening toothpaste, will actually make my teeth whiter. But it tastes good, so let’s give it a try!

At Toastmasters this evening, the Table Topics Master asked me what the difference in the meaning of responsibility was between Chinese culture and my culture. I needed to think about it but after a minute I said it went back to the difference between collectivism and individualism. Of course, to tag a culture as collectivist or individualist should be taken lightly—all cultures run on a continuum of these two things. So please forgive my generalisations. I am trying to be descriptive.

I have been brought up knowing that I must take responsibility for myself first. Being true to myself means knowing my values and my principles. They are not selfish values: one of the most important ones is to treat others as individuals too. But it does mean that I should not worry about the scorn and judgment of the community but what I believe is right. I should not depend on my parents, the government and so on to solve any of my problems.

Chinese people are taught their entire lives to feel responsibility for their country, family, ancestors and the people around them. The consequence is that everyone has not broken away from these feelings spends their lives doing what others expect of them. It also makes it difficult for Chinese to understand non conformity, such as someone who does not want to marry. People from round my way are taught to respect themselves, and to respect others as one respects oneself (“love thy neighbour,” etc.). That means that, if others are doing something wrong, even if everyone around you is doing it, you should put a stop to it.

That is not to say that no one in an individualist culture feels peer pressure. There can be just as much peer pressure as in a collectivist society. A culture of individualism can make those insecure in their individuality retreat to the safety of their affiliations, be they religious, national, ethnic, familial, and so on. It also does not prevent the so called “keeping up with the Joneses” effect, the pressure to buy ostentatiously to attain the luxury one’s peers appear to enjoy.

Likewise, collectivist Chinese culture does not mean that Chinese people are altruistic. It is rare to see people help each other with heavy bags, for instance, and China is a notoriously infuriating place to stand in line. There is also more pressure to return favours than I have experienced elsewhere, even among friends. I may have damaged relationships with Chinese people by not recognizing and acting on this.

Respect is related to this responsibility question. Some Chinese people will never question authority, because doing so is disrespectful. I have always felt that standing up for myself, even to my parents, means respecting myself; and since that is what my parents want me to do, it is respecting them too.

What collectivist Chinese culture boils down to is an unshakeable belief that one is part of a group, a group more important than any of its members, including you. What individualist Canadian culture means is we must take care of ourselves and our own interests first, and everyone else can do the same.

Zhouzhuang is a town outside Suzhou. I hesitate to call it a tourist town but the tourist spots were all we saw. We went there for the day and saw this charming little old town and had a great time.

Monkey royalty Chris and Joy went with apes Ivy, Sharrif and Chris (from China, England and England) to Zhouzhuang. If you have ever been to Shantangjie (山塘街, you have a good idea what Zhouzhuang is like. It is mostly narrow, cobbled streets with little shops on either side, and canals running through the town. The canals apparently form the character 井, which means a well (although that is presumably incidental).

The town is sprinkled with attractions like big houses for lords, parks, a daoist temple and, of course, the canals. In case you have not been to Suzhou, it has canals running in each direction through it, running alongside main streets and necessitating bridges everywhere. It is my favourite part of living in Suzhou, in fact. And in Zhouzhuang, the canals are even more obvious.

They are full of boats waiting to take tourists, but they are organised so that not everyone is yelling at you to go with them. We went through the town on a boat that rocked perilously left and right as we moved. The old man rowing was singing in the local dialect, which some of us didn’t like but I loved. He asked for a tip for the song and even though, for some reason, there was a sign saying we should not give him tips, I handed him ten kuai (a dollar and a half). He raised two fingers, asking for twenty kuai, and I laughed and said no. He kept smiling anyway.

The boat ride was my favourite part of the day. It was peaceful, musical and interesting at the same time. We got to see the old walls of the houses lined up by the canal, the banks, the boats, the bridges and the birds.

Traveling to Zhouzhuang was a bit more expensive than last year’s trip to Qinhuangdao and Beidaihe (in Hebei, when we lived in Beijing), and it was quite touristy, which can be really annoying in China, but overall it was worth the time and money. We would also like to visit Tongli (同理), near Zhouzhuang and, so they say, far less touristy. Guess that’s our next stop!

苏州乐园很好玩！

The Monkey Kings, Monkey Queen and Monkey Friend Shelley went to Suzhou Amusement Park and had a great time. Here were the notable things we did. (*** is excellent, ** means fun and * was not really worth it.)

* 4D Cinema: Boring. A show (in Chinese) about the future, with some 3D effects. We thought, at 2kuai, it can’t be that bad. We were wrong.

* Video Tele-Combat: Disappointing. I usually never have expectations but the name made me think this would be some kind of sci fi fantasy video game, like laser tag, or light sabers, or the Back to the Future ride at Universal Studios. It’s a good amusement park, but it’s Suzhou, not Los Angeles. It is really just small spaceships that fly around that can supposedly kill each other on these really cheap video game screens. Don’t worry too much about this one unless you are with preschool children.

* Merry-go-round: The ladies enjoyed it but the Kings were only really there for the ladies. No surprises: it’s a merry-go-round.

* Small World: A copy of the It’s a Small World attraction at Disney World, minus the singing (which is a good thing) and minus the quality of craftsmanship, animation and size of Disney World. Again, it’s Suzhou, not Orlando, but I’m not sure what children would think of this ride because some of the dolls looked like vampires. And the dolls were a bit jumbled: there were Transformers next to Snow White and the dwarfs on one side, and ancient Chinese legends on the other.

** Cable Cars: Nice view, slow meander over the lake and forest up the hill. Not really worth it if you are not going to take the Gliders down (see below).

** Sky Shuttle: Like the cable cars, the Sky Shuttle rises really high over everything and you get a great view of the park and a lot of Suzhou, too. Too slow to be a ride but still worth it.

*** Bumper Cars: Bumper cars! I could have rode on them a hundred times (so we rode on them twice).

*** Flying Carousel: Better than I expected. You sit on swings that rise ten or twenty metres and go around pretty fast. You fly over a building and the lake, and I kept thinking I could leap off, James Bond style, and onto the roof.

*** Top Secret: You walk into a big, round room and stand in the middle. When the show starts, you see tv screens all around you–a video captured with a 360 degree camera plays for 10 minutes. The show was partly Imaxesque (slow pans over mountain tops) but mostly following the Tour de France in a car, all around the country. You could really get into the action, especially since the floor was moving with the camera. Fun and exciting.

*** Space Adventure: Like Space Mountain, just not as long. In case you have never been on Space Mountain, it is an indoor roller coaster, where everything is dark and you can’t see much in front of you, you just get scared.

*** Suspended Looping Coaster: The three stars is taking into account the 40kuai it cost us each to ride. This is what amusement parks are all about–the crazy, looping, flying, freaky rides like this. If you like roller coasters, take this one, and ride right in the front like we did. Watch your feet!

*** Gliders: We finished off the day with a ride on the hang gliders. It really did feel like we were flying. It was scary at first, but once you are past the forest and over the lake, you just glide like a falcon. Exhilarating.

We went on a sunny day when there were hardly any others there. It would have been fun even if there were big crowds, and there were almost no line ups. Great, great time had by all.