Gender-bending and other titbits on holiday in China

In the railway station Marion goes off for a smoke and I cover her seat with her jacket and mine to book her spot. A Chinese woman promptly comes over and sits on the jackets, clearly relieved to find a seat. “Zheli you ren, xiaojie“. This seat is taken, ma’am, I say. She stares at me with — ostensibly — incomprehension and complete innocence, looking around for assistance to understand what my concern is. As if she cannot understand me. A woman sitting on the other side of her repeats exactly what I have said and after a few seconds the lass, her deep brown skin giving away her occupation as a manual labourer or farm worker, vaguely understands, stands up, slowly walks off, oblivious — apparently — to the fact she has been sitting on someone else’s possessions. In China putting garments and bags on a seat are also a well-known way to show the seat is occupied but … this is still China.

Other than that, in the railway stations I wonder at the sheer androgyny of some young men and women in China. Especially the men. Perhaps in a backlash to the austere post-Maoist and post-Confucian upbringings of their parent, where even under which Chinese astral year your bride-to-be was born can be very important to the parents, they rebel by appearing like Western Cosmopolitan magazine female versions of themselves. Yes, this is a young man waiting in the same railway station as us, rather beautiful with his dyed fountain-splash of yellow hair tinged with pink and the obligatory sulky look. (Click on images to enlarge.)Notice how he stands out completely from the Chinese men around him. Typically, they wear black and other monochromes, a testimony to their conservative, demure nature. The above scenes take place whilst Marion aka the Chook, and I took our first holiday outside of Shanghai in years to a small city, Suzhou. We recommend Suzhou (out of season) for its cultural heritage sites and authentic “old Chinese” areas that are not too touristy. Most of a chapter is devoted to this sweet spot in my book Cracking China, now available. Despite the tender mercies of the Maoist era there are still some ancient buildings and relics glinting everywhere like old ghosts, such as a Confucian school about two thousand five hundred years old, not far from where these photos were taken.Whilst in Suzhou we stay for free with an old Canadian Bohemian friend, Randy, a dedicated hedonist in his mid-fifties. For his birthday we once bought him a bottle of tequila with a large box of condoms strapped to the bottle. He really appreciated that, which almost sums up his priapic character. Unfortunately a whole scene with him was censored from my book Cracking China: a memoir, as all involved in the project were convinced there is a place for Cracking China in SA’s school market.

In Suzhou we avoid places you have to pay for, as, well, we don’t like to pay. We’ve done ’em before and there are far less people in more meditative sights in these photos of mine:After five years of us being here the children still stop dead in their tracks and titter, laowai, laowai, foreigner, foreigner! Like these cute little mites, dressed very typically for the end of winter cold, swaddled in layers of clothing to protect them from the cold as well as falls and scratches.These are typically curious mainland Chinese children, astonished by foreigners, especially if they come from the countryside or more remote parts of China. To us we are so different, and having been here long enough I can almost see through their eyes. Westerners are shaped differently, bulbous heads, strangely round, sky-blue eyes, beak-like noses, pinkish skin like slowly cooking, sweating hams in the sun. I can usually recognise a westerner from behind even if his hair is black: the pink-skinned neck, the square shoulders, bulging backside. Most Chinese men and women don’t have behinds to speak of. We have found both sexes in China have turn-ons westerners don’t understand or don’t usually go for: long, swan-like necks, men with ruby, pouting lips, very skinny, androgynous features (to westerners).

Chinese children: I have taught this age group and they are a delight to teach. They love giving you little gifts — if they like you — then scamper off. The one on the right in pink in the photo above has me especially broody. Look at that impish face! To me it says, “teacher Rod, you don’t know what I just did. And you don’t wanna know, and I am not telling you.”

“I bought lamb kebabs, not chicken kebabs!” I thunder at the woman on the other side of the food counter where various kebabs hiss and simmer on drums filled with burning coal. She pretends she cannot understand me, an old Chinese trick, rather like the Chinese lass who sat on our jackets. But the Chinese now gathering around the scene all do understand her, and tell her exactly what I am already telling her in Mandarin. In China, a squabble on the streets cannot possibly be private. People will gather around the offended parties who are yelling at each other until there is a crowd of hundreds watching the spectacle. Some onlookers form private committees dedicated to negotiate a settlement between the aggrieved antagonists. This is done without the injured parties’ permission, I might add.

I have been in this situation now many a time in China and have learned to use the public’s burning inquisitiveness over a “private” dispute to my advantage. The other annoyance — one that happens often — is that she had kept confusing the kebab deal. I had wanted four kebabs and she had pushed across six and kept changing price details for the order. I know she made a few extra coins out of the sale but I did not care as the few coins are not worth it.

But now I continue to bellow my grievance and could feel the crowd of spectators multiplying behind me. Advantage, Rod: close to game set and match with Rod the victor. Marion has walked off, used to my displays when dealt with unfairly, my buddy Randy stands by me, almost a crowd hustler, explaining the grievance to the onlookers, out of which a self-appointed Committee of Inquiry will soon form and engage with the now hapless kebab seller. My kebab con artist looks nervously at the expanding, entertained mob and her manager hastily arrives from elsewhere, rushes around the counter and pushes some more kebabs across to me that have a different colour to the ones I had got. I readily assume these are yangrou, lamb. Randy and I stalk off and rejoin the Chook who, whilst I was bellowing indignantly, found something of deep interest in a shop window on the far side of the street. It turns out the sosaties I got are still chicken kebabs and I give up.

I should have got the squid kebabs Marion and Randy got from the same place: there is no mistaking the quivering tentacles as you munch. Here is Chook and Randy enjoying theirs.In our wanderings we are also reminded of how ascetic the poorer Chinese are with their money. Here, as they have done for centuries, is a small storeroom for several homes for the winter meals. The room is still half-filled with relatively cheap cauliflowers which preserve well in the winters.Near the end of winter now they still have a lot of cauliflowers so they have done well.

The bar stools in the Drunken Chef look like barbers’ chairs. I sit down on one and it slowly, groaningly, descends till my chin is barely above the bar counter and I am almost looking up at my glistening Carlsberg draught. I change chairs for a rickety one the British owner offers and feel I am a monstrously overgrown parakeet swaying in my bird cage, now with an aerial view of the enticing foam on that Carlsberg. We sit at a table instead, stiff with linen napkins like small gravestones. “So what is the happy hour deal then?” I ask the bar owner, slurping with rapture my beer after a stiff day’s walk and dealing with wayward kebab sellers and another con who tried to flog me a new computer power cable for my laptop for about four hundred rands. It should be about one hundred bucks. I told her that her “brain must be broken”, a common insult in Chinese which does not translate well into English. Anyway, the burly bar owner, Kevin, looks up from his laptop and a trifle condescendingly says, “Happy hour? No no. No no no no. We do other things now, like if you get a taxi receipt, we will give you a free beer,” he smiles patronisingly across at us, perhaps expecting us to leap with joy over the magnanimous gesture. All day “happy hours” are a common feature of ex-pat pubs in China. After one beer we leave his understandably empty pub.

Other than that we just spend decadent afternoons after long morning walks in well-priced Mexican-western-Chinese fusion restaurants with great beer. Oh, I highly recommend “The Southern Cross” and their jalapenos cheese poppers … hoo aah! Large jalapeños stuffed with chilli, cheese and other goodies. They are so hot I feel, after the first few bites, that my wincing tongue is telling me to stop shoving glowing cigars into my mouth. Twirling the poppers in sour cream is a great way to cool them down.

(The Cracker in The Southern Cross with his Chookie after leaving The Drunken Chef. He’s extolling the virtues of Carlsberg and bemoaning the poor attitude found at The Drunken Chef pub. Photo by Randy. )

Also, the Mexican-Chinese fusion spring rolls at The Drunken Clam. There the draught beer is very cheap, as little as twelve RMB a draught and you get the second one free. The best was the chilli-based spicy Hunan style Chinese food and here is a page from the menu which gets poetic at times, when the menu items are not in your face:It was Valentine’s Day over this period and I got Chookie this wonderful “bouquet” as a gift. Look carefully:Hey come on! She is a great cook!