The Monkey Kings 美猴王

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.

Last night the Monkey Kings and Queen went with our agent and friend, Maggie, to a Xinjiang restaurant called 北疆饭店. The food was delicious! Almost all of it was spicy, but not too spicy. The bread with meat in them (新疆肉夹馍 I guess!) were fantastic, and we also had a big stew of meat, potatoes, ginger, and other things. The only thing that was disappointing were the mutton skewers–good but only as good as you would get on the street. Either way, the food was good and so was the company.

We met some people from… well, hard to say where they were from, as they had lived all over the world. They had lived in Thailand for the past five years, in China for two years before that, and other places before that. We ate with a little white boy who, if you asked him his nationality, would say Thai. It was an interesting example of what AIESECers and others call nomads. They (eg. my mother) always say that moving around too much screws children up, but I asked them and they seemed quite well adjusted. You gain much flexibility and understanding of the world when you live in different places. We will do more research on the question before we have children and move all over.

After dinner we went to the Suzhou Sheraton, just across the street. The rich know how to travel! We expected it to be flashy, of course, but we did not realise quite what it would look like. The front is of a city wall and old Chinese pagoda. Inside is an art store full of beautiful paintings and other works, and a waterfall that changes colour. My favourite part, however, was the garden. It was rocks and grass, with a stream running through it, and a beautiful pool that I would have loved to swim in. Makes you want to get rich, doesn’t it?