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.

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.