China Bits

Haze, a skyscraper under construction: a bit of China

BY WAY OF A PREFACE


It's been more than a year now since I posted on this blog. Now it's time to get back to it and to provide some background about why I've not been writing.

I have several excuses. One, pure laziness: writing is work. Second, Iowa Laoshi in the Middle Kingdom has written so well about many of our experiences here in China that I don't believe that I can add much more than "yea". And finally--and most distressingly--I feel that I don't really know much about China.

We've been living in China for over a year now, and I'd logged some time in earlier visits before moving here. But unlike our experience in India, where we lived in a family compound (in a guest apartment), worked in Indian workplaces, and spoke a local language (English), we've none of that here. Of course, we didn't get far with our Hindi (and nowhere with our Malayalam), but where we lived and worked, the locals spoke English, often extremely well. In China, C works in an English-language school that consists of all English-speakers except for the janitorial staff. (Even the Australians and New Zealanders speak English, although sometimes I wonder with those accents and strange turnes-of-phrase.) I work at home, so I have not regular social contact with locals. Smiles and a Chinese "hello" ("ni hao"), along with ordering some of my favorite dishes at the local noodle shop, are my most extensive local interactions. I volunteer as a coach at the school, but I can teach basketball and volleyball in English (and most of the players are Korean  anyway). Add to this the observations of our eldest, who's spent a long time in China and who speaks the language well, that trying to get to the heart of Chinese society is like trying to to peel to the center of an onion. A very large onion. I've been discouraged.

However, I realized that while my direct understanding will be limited, I still observe things. To borrow the term that Temple Grandin used to describe herself to Oliver Sacks, I can be an "anthropologist on Mars". I won't be able to ask questions or discover explanations, but I can describe from the outside what I percieve and ponder.

And so I'll try to do this in small chunks. It will be bits of China, short observations (barring some great revelations). Thus, I'll introduce such pieces as "China Bits", bite-sized observations and reflections to whet the appetite. For real insight and deep consideration--to provide real nutritional value--you'll have to turn elsewhere. But if nothing else, I hope that I'll provoke some curiosity and further inquiry.