The Monkey Kings 美猴王

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.

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！

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!

The Kings have been learning Chinese idioms and have decided that English could benefit from them. We have thus decided to translate and disseminate some of them. We prefer the four word variety, and will give credit to the Chinese when using them in conversation. For example, when the traffic is heavy, one can say “As the Chinese say, ‘car water horse dragon’ [车水马龙].”

As things get worse, one can say “river stream sun under” [江河日下]。 Then you must “fight heaven stand ground” [顶天立地]; because, as we know, “more toil more get” [多劳多得]. You can “self have public speak” [自有公论] when you are popular, though it could mean “ten thousand water one thousand mountain” [万水千山] to get there.

We’ve also decided to streamline some English idioms into the four word/four syllable format in order to make everyone’s life easier. Instead of the cumbersome “beware of Greeks bearing gifts”, one can now simply say “watch out Greek horse” (translated into Chinese possibly as “希马注意”?). One ought not to “kill gold egg goose”, nor should one ever “make me monkey” (make a monkey out of someone)–unless, of course, you are the Monkey King. “Horse first then cart” is a lesson for anyone learning these new idioms, for as we know, “walk slow win race”.

The Kings of old went to Tai Lake, or Tai Hu Lake, whatever they call it. It is a big lake just down the highway west of Suzhou. We went with two of our students (Ken and Christina) and one of the tutors (Tracy, all pictured below) from Web. We got to drive through a couple of districts we had never seen before and saw mountains, rivers partly covered by grasses and lilies, and a long bridge across the lake that leads to the three big mountains. We didn’t climb them–not this time–but we did go to a restaurant overlooking the lake. To get there, you walk along winding paths with streamlets on either side full of goldfish. We even picked pomegranates. It was a great way to spend our day off. As soon as the weather cools down we will do more traveling around Suzhou.

We ate dinner at 水天堂大酒店, a good restaurant with a fantastic stewed chicken dish we tried. After dinner, we went to 金鸡湖 (translation: Gold Cock Lake), a big, beautiful lake to watch what you might call a lake show.

We walked around where hundreds of others were milling. Suddenly, lights of all different colours illuminated the harbour, some on the surface of the water, some shooting forward in swirling patterns and some rising as far as you could see into the sky. Water shot from spouts on the surface, elevated lights turned the shooting water purple, green and red, fire burst from a wall and heated our faces and I stood by, fascinated.

The water swished back and forth, sometimes creating heart shapes, sometimes arching and weaving, always with grace and wild colours. The lights on the water would change colour and pattern as the water flew and the lights in the sky rose and fell. Across the water, we could see fireworks in one direction, an island of green trees with lights under them in another, and a brightly coloured ferry crossing the lake. Suzhou is great!

One of my favourite things about China is how open people are to meeting newcomers. Last night, Matt and I went to an outdoor barbecue to buy dinner around 10pm. I used to go to this kind of place and buy barbecued sticks of meat and bread (羊肉串儿，馒头，等等) in Beijing all the time; and I was thrilled to find there is one near our apartment.

So we bought food from three of the vendors. Vendors often make the food with their family: the first place we bought from was a husband and wife, the second a mother and son and the third two parents and their daughter. We got into conversations with all of them. The third group was doing the usual “you speak Chinese so well!” that we get from everyone (doesn’t really mean anything, since they’ve been saying that since I started learning), and the daughter said something about Americans being good at Chinese and I said in Chinese “we’re not Americans! Not all white people are American.”

It is so funny to talk to lower and middle class Chinese people. They are curious, which is great, but they don’t know much about the world. I can answer all their first five questions before I hear them: I am from Canada, not the United States or England; I am teaching English in China; yes, of course I like China; yes, of course I like Chinese food; thank you, thank you for the compliment on my Chinese.

Either way, the people we were talking to may have assumed we were American but they quickly learned. I’m glad to be among open minded people who I can teach, when so many people in the world are closed minded and think they know everything.