TABOO IS THE NEW NORMAL

October 1, 2012

A review of “Behind the Red Door” by Richard Burger
Review by Tom Carter

Among the many misimpressions westerners tend to have of China, sex as some kind of taboo topic here seems to be the most common, if not clichéd.  Forgetting for a moment that, owing to a population of 1.3 billion, somebody must be doing it, what most of us don’t seem to know is that, at several points throughout the millennia, China has been a society of extreme sexual openness.

And now, according to author Richard Burger’s new book Behind the Red Door, the Chinese are once again on the verge of a sexual revolution.

Best known for his knives-out commentary on The Peking Duck, one of China’s longest-running expat blogs, Burger takes a similar approach to surveying the subject of sex among the Sinae, leaving no explicit ivory carving unexamined, no raunchy ancient poetry unrecited, and, ahem, no miniskirt unturned.

Opening (metaphorically and literally) with an introduction about hymen restoration surgery, Burger delves dàndàn-deep into the olden days of Daoism, those prurient practitioners of free love who encouraged multiple sex partners as the ultimate co-joining of Yin and Yang.  Promiscuity, along with prostitution, flourished during the Tang Dynasty – recognized as China’s cultural zenith – which Burger’s research surmises is no mere coincidence.

Enter the Yuan Dynasty, and its conservative customs of Confucianism, whereby sex became regarded only “for the purpose of producing heirs.”  As much as we love to hate him, Mao Zedong is credited as single-handedly wiping out all those nasty neo-Confucius doctrines, including eliminating foot binding, forbidding spousal abuse, allowing divorce, banning prostitution (except, of course, for Party parties), and encouraging women to work.  But in typical fashion, laws were taken too far; within 20 years, China under Mao became a wholly androgynous state.

We then transition from China’s red past into the pink-lit present, whence prostitution is just a karaoke bar away, yet possession of pornography is punishable by imprisonment – despite the fact that millions of single Chinese men (called bare branches) will never have wives or even girlfriends due to gross gender imbalance.

Burger laudably also tackles the sex trade from a female’s perspective, including an interview with a housewife-turned-hair-salon hostess who, ironically, finds greater success with foreigners than with her own sex-starved albeit ageist countrymen.

Western dating practices among hip, urban Chinese are duly contrasted with traditional courtship conventions, though, when it comes down to settling down, Burger points out that the Chinese are still generally resistant to the idea that marriage can be based on love.  This topic naturally segues into the all-but-acceptable custom of kept women (little third), as well as homowives, those tens of millions of straight women trapped in passionless unions with closeted gay men out of filial piety.

Behind the Red Door concludes by stressing that while the Chinese remain a sexually open society at heart, contradictive policies (enforced by dubious statistics) designed to discard human desire are written into law yet seldom enforced, simply because “sexual contentment is seen as an important pacifier to keep society stable and harmonious.”

____________________________

Travel Photographer Tom Carter traveled for 2 years across the 33 provinces of China to show the diversity of Chinese people in  China: Portrait of a People, the most comprehensive photography book on modern China published by a single author.

Also by Tom Carter Eating Smoke — a question and answer with author, Chris Thrall in addition to Harlequin Romance Invades China

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Note: This guest post by Tom Carter first appeared in China in City Weekend Magazine. Reblogged with permission of Tom Carter. Behind the Red Door was published by Earnshaw Books

2 Comments | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Chinese literature, Chinese men, Chinese women, Confucianism, expatriates, expatriots, Taoism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

On Education – Learning to Love and Hate while teaching ESL in the Middle Kingdom

April 2, 2012

In 1949, China’s peasantry, more than 85% of the population, was still largely individualistic, illiterate, superstitious and lived in extreme poverty. Fast forward to the early 21st century and we may understand how much China has changed in the sixty-three years since then.  Today, more than 90% are literate and learning English is mandatory in China’s public schools.

“Yes China” by Clark Nielsen is an honest memoir written by a young American going to China to teach English in an alien and foreign culture. Nielsen pulls no punches in describing himself and his experiences teaching ESL in China, and is not shy when it comes to scorching himself and his former religion in the process.

In fact, his vivid descriptions of teaching in China reminded me of my three decades as an English and Journalism teacher in US public schools.

In the late 1970s, I worked as a substitute teacher and the descriptions of the first classes Nielsen taught reminded me too much of the American grade school, then middle school and eventually high school students I taught 1975 – 2005.


Songs that help teach English as a second language.

For example, in 1977, I was a substitute teacher in Southern California and as the fifth-grade students I taught one day—and never to see again—flooded into the classroom at the beginning of school, one boy saw me, squealed “Sub!” and then started to chase and pummel other students while knocking over desks as if having a substitute teacher was a ticket to mayhem.

I suspect that the young Chinese students Nielsen first taught may have had similar thoughts when they saw his foreign face.

Like Nielsen, I had classes I loved to teach and others I hated to face each day, and this went on for the thirty years I was a classroom teacher.

I hate to say this but the old phrase, “kids will be kids” has a ring of truth to it even though I hate hearing it since many parents seem to use it as an excuse to do nothing to correct unacceptable behavior.

From Nielsen’s vivid descriptions of the behavior of Chinese grade-school students, I discovered that there is little difference between America’s children and China’s — it seems that “kids will be kids” in any country/culture  if the parents allow them to behave as if they were wild animals and/or barbarians.

However, similar to my experience as a teacher, Nielsen also found gold in some of his students. In fact, the last semester he taught in China, he fought back tears as he said goodbye to one of his good classes.

There are also vivid scenes, from his foreign perspective, of what it must be like to live and work in a developing country where more than a billion people still live in poverty.  Before 1949, the average life span in China was age thirty-five. When Nielsen arrived to teach ESL, that number had changed drastically. Today, the average lifespan is 73, and less than 3% live in severe poverty.

China is a developing country on steroids and Nielsen’s experiences in China reflect that. For this reason, when wanting to discover what it is like to move from a Western culture such as America’s to an alien and foreign land, it is best to read more than one memoir on that subject for a better perspective.

For example, I found “Yes China” an interesting contrast to Janet Elaine Smith’s memoir, “Rebel With a Cause”. While Nielson rejected and abandons his Mormon religion, Smith went abroad to spend nine years as an evangelical missionary in Venezuela. She was not a Mormon and her motives were almost the exact opposite of Nielsen’s.

Before becoming an expatriate, Smith worked with Native Americans and Latinos in the US, so the culture shock was not as great, and Nielsen did not work with people living in extreme poverty as Smith did.

However, Smith was not prepared for the extreme poverty of most of the people the mission she was with were serving, and, unlike Nielsen, she used teaching English to become more of a part of the culture.

Smith was “warned” by her superiors not to minister to the wealthy class, as they would never accept the gospel. Nielsen probably worked mostly with children of middle class and wealth parents in urban China.

When Smith was approached by a bank president, a physician, a teacher and a government officer to teach them English, she took the open door as a “sign” from God and defied the orders and held free English classes out of her home.

For a richer experience and to understand the culture she was living in, she exchanged the English lessons for Spanish classes to help her learn the local vernacular of Spanish and the customs of the Venezuelan people—something Nielsen and most Western/American ESL teachers in China do not do. Instead, they arrive in China ready to criticize anything different that does not fit the Western lifestyle they are used to.

For Smith, this different attitude paid off. Later, when Smith needed help for paper work, cashing checks, medical care, etc. Venezuelans were available to help her, while her American Evangelical overseers struggled trying to find such help.

Although Nielsen meets his future wife in China—a Chinese citizen—and they both live in Utah today, I doubt that he truly understood or embraced the Chinese culture as Smith did in Venezuela due to the differences in how they approached their experiences as expatriates teaching English in a foreign land—a developing and/or third world country, which is very different from being a citizen in North America.  In Smith’s memoir, I do not sense the love-hate relationship that Nielsen had with China. He seems to have no purpose for going there to teach English other than some need to rebel and escape Mormon Utah where he grew up.

In fact, Nielsen’s passages that paint an unflattering picture of Mormonism reveal his true motive for going to China. I felt as if Nielsen fled to China to escape the reaction of his Mormon friends and peers after he let them know he wasn’t going to go out as a missionary, which is expected of all Mormons, and in spite of himself, once he arrived in China, he found more acceptance from the Chinese than he did in Utah. After all, he came home with a Chinese wife and that was not the reason he went to China.

I enjoyed reading Nielsen’s memoir and found myself laughing at his misadventures while teaching ESL in China.  In addition, on his days off from teaching, he traveled about the country as more than a tourist but less than someone like Janet Elaine Smith who found a way to reach across the culture gap and accept and understand the differences that exist.

Another book I recommend is Tom Carter’s “China: Portrait of a People”, which shows his experiences in China in mostly pictures with some text.  Carter, like Nielsen, taught ESL in China and then married a Chinese citizen, but Carter is still working in China. In addition, he visited, often on foot, every province of China and took thousands of photos of his two year epic journey.

“Eating Smoke” by Chris Thrall is another recommended expatriate memoir taking place in China.

Four books/memoirs of expatriates in developing countries with four very different stories, motives and perspectives.

Discover Tom Carter and Chris Thrall through book reviews of their work.

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

Subscribe to “iLook China”!
Sign up for an E-mail Subscription at the top of this page, or click on the “Following” tab in the WordPress toolbar at the top of the screen.

About iLook China

5 Comments | America, American culture, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese food, cultural differences, education, expatriates, expatriots, family values, parenting, religion | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Tom Carter’s Review of Chris Thrall’s “Eating Smoke”

December 14, 2011

Don’ Do The Drug!
A review of Chris Thrall’s “Eating Smoke“
By Tom Carter

What just might be the funniest if not first autobiography ever penned by a drug-addicted foreigner in China, Chris Thrall’s “Eating Smoke” contains more spiritual pollution than all of the titles on the Communist Party’s banned books list combined.

In a country whose history was irrevocably altered for the worst by the scourge of foreign-imported opium throughout the nineteenth century, it is no wonder that today’s China has one of the world’s least-tolerant anti-drug laws – including executions for traffickers. Basically, buying or selling drugs in China is a really stupid idea.

Enter Chris: “I’m not a stupid guy, just an average guy who does stupid things”.

Thrall, a 25 year-old Royal Marine who hastily quits the service to pursue a business venture in 1990’s-era Hong Kong, a city “where situations can only get worse,” just to find himself broke, homeless and fulfilling his own ominous prophecy.

Recalling the commando’s motto of “cheerfulness under adversity,” Thrall tries to make the best of his lowly situation by spending his time dancing in discos or hanging out in the notorious Chungking Mansions, “the world’s all-time greatest doshouse.”

The immigrant ghetto of Kowloon is not, however, the best influence on Thrall, who befriends all the wrong people, including a hebephile drug dealer from Ghana and a Filipina working girl, and soon succumbs to that favorite of Chungking pastimes–drugs.

To fund his new crystal meth habit, our detritivorous narrator forages the South China city-by-the-sea like a bottom-feeder for any job that will hire a white face.

From cubicle fixture to phone-book scams, English teacher to nightclub DJ, businessman to bouncer, Thrall manages to get fired from every gig dumb enough to hire a spun-out “chi sun gweilo” (crazy foreigner in Cantonese) who doesn’t sleep for 9 days at a time and tends to forget his own surname.

By the time Thrall reaches his last-resort of a job–as a doorman at a bar operated by the 14K, the largest Triad (Chinese crime family) in the world–he has been reduced to a hyper-paranoid shadow of his former self on the verge of drug psychosis.

“I would listen to the radio phone-ins, suspicious of the Cantonese conversation and wondering if people were calling in to report my movements,” he says during one of his many speed-soaked conspiracy theories.

What ensues is a hilarious amphetamine-paced cautionary tale of what NOT to do when addicted to drugs in Wan Chai gangland, “where the Dai Lo’s rule is law, pride is everything and life means nothing.”

Chris Thrall’s true story evokes Gregory David Roberts’ “Shantaram” and Alex Garland’s “The Beach,” both of which have been licensed to Hollywood, as “Eating Smoke” is sure to follow.

Also by Tom Carter Eating Smoke — a question and answer with author, Chris Thrall in addition to Harlequin Romance Invades China

____________________________

Travel Photographer Tom Carter traveled for 2 years across the 33 provinces of China to show the diversity of Chinese people in  China: Portrait of a People, the most comprehensive photography book on modern China published by a single author.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

3 Comments | China, Chinese Culture, crime, cultural differences, expatriates, expatriots | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Chinese Tour Groups: Blight? Or Smart Traveling? (Viewed as Single Page)

September 13, 2011

This guest post by Tom Carter first appeared June 13, 2010 as a five part series starting with Chinese Tour Groups: Blight? Or Smart Traveling? – Part 1

_______________

“What could possibly compel them to do something so … wrong?”

This was the question posed by a group of expats sitting around a youth hostel in scenic Huangshan Mountain, China’s beloved mountain range in Anhui Province, discussing the legions of tourists who had disrupted their 72-peak excursion.

As the foreign travelers retell it, what was supposed to have been a heavenly respite turned into an out-and-out circus replete with megaphones, flags and the congestion of untold numbers of tourists with the inopportune desire to see the same thing at the same time.

“We could barely walk up the narrow steps because there were too many tour groups, we couldn’t see the view past their florescent hats and we couldn’t even hear the birds because of all the noise,” complained the foreign travelers.

Crowded scenes are commonplace in China, where 1.3 billion people must contend with both limited time and space during the country’s few and far between national holidays.

But where Western travelers, not unlike their world-exploring forefathers, pride themselves on independence, requiring little more than a backpack and a point in the right direction to circumnavigate exotic new countries, the historically communal Chinese tend to have quite a different perspective on travel.

“We like to go where everybody goes,” said one Chinese tourist when prompted to explain the disorder of collective travel. “If there are no crowds, it means it’s not a good place to visit.”

Note from iLook China Blog host: Click here for Chinese holidays in the People’s Republic of China for 2010, which is the best time “NOT” to travel in China as a foreign tourist unless you love crowds and organized tours.


An alternative explanation of the chaos that orbits China’s favorite attractions is the government’s authoritative instruction of where and when the populace may travel, preferring brief, intensive bursts during the national holidays rather than a steady flow.

This quarterly policy may make for impressive economic reports (though Xinhua News Agency reports a growing disfavor with the eight-year-old Golden Week holiday system), but it creates a havoc that is all of dissuading foreigners from extensive travel in China.

Indeed, every summer scores of Western backpackers are stranded in Shaanxi’s provincial capital city of Xi’an, home of terracotta warriors, waiting indefinitely for train tickets back to Beijing, often resulting in missed return flights home. The blame for this calamity lies with the tour group companies themselves, who purchase large blocks of tickets (often in advance through personal connection with train station officials), leaving nary a hard seat available for the independent traveler.

And what of the more noticeable effects of those traveling en masse to China’s wonderland attractions?

Jiuzhaigou National Park in Sichuan is a site not to be missed, where emerald lakes reflecting a vertical alpine forest blazing in the autumn with crimson and gold make this protected region the country’s premier travel destination.

Unfortunately, what visitors will dauntingly meet with at the park’s entrance is a concert of tour buses piercing the surroundings with deafening blasts of their horns and vomiting black exhaust (contributing to Jiuzhaigou’s own environmental downfall), while streams of red and yellow hat-wearing, litter-tossing tourists noisily follow a flag-waving guide shouting instructions into a loudspeaker.

When pressed for an elucidation of the social and ecological consequences of collective traveling, a local tour operator rejoins fiscally, “I provide guaranteed transportation, accommodations and discounted entrance tickets, all in one package. Without tour group companies like mine, traveling in China would be impossible!”

To the foreign observer, such logic is the bane of China’s heritage, with intrusive tour groups appreciating neither the splendor nor history of the site but rather in a seeming rush to take a snapshot in front of a character-engraved stone before dashing back on their buses to the next site.

But for the Chinese, the constipation and the urgency are indicative of a culture categorically limited in both time and space, where itinerary replaces independence and processed convenience is preferred over pleasure.

“The national holidays are my only chance to spend with my family and see my country,” exclaims a Chinese businessman from Beijing on his way to the Yunnan old town of Lijiang, China’s third most popular holiday destination. “With a tour group, I don’t have to plan, I don’t have to worry, I don’t have to think.”

__________________________

Travel photographer Tom Carter is the author of CHINA: Portrait of a People, a 600-page book of photography from the 33 provinces of China, which may be found on Amazon.com.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

4 Comments | China, Chinese Culture, cultural differences, expatriates, expatriots, tourism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

24 Hours in Qiannianyaozhai (Viewed as a Single Page)

August 19, 2011

This Guest Post by Tom Carter originally ran as a three-part series starting May 24, 2010.

Eclipsed by the neon blaze of Guangzhou and lost in the limestone peaks of northern Guangdong is 1,000 year-old Qiannianyaozhai, the oldest Yao minority village in China.

Over 7,000 Yao people once occupied the mountain community; however poverty and generational differences have dramatically thinned the ethnic population, leaving Qiannianyaozhai in its present perfectly preserved state.

6am: Rise and shine in Liannan County for a long day of exploring bucolic North Guangdong. Unlike steel-and-glass PRD, the north is a poem-inspiring swath of farmland and karst summits.

7am: Ask several locals for directions, but either their regional dialect is unintelligible or they each point in a different direction. These are the joys of traveling in rural China.

8am: Well-informed bengbeng taxi takes us twenty kilometers southwest up a lush mountainside to “Nangang Thousand Year Yao Zu Village.” Crowning the 800-meter crest we behold our destination: the mystical Qiannianyaozhai.

12am: Spend several hours wandering this living museum. The only sounds to be heard are the whispering wind and an occasional farmer’s hoe against soil. Clustering against the amphitheater-like gradient are approximately 400 stone-and-slate homes, standing majestic and unscathed since their Song Dynasty construction.

1pm: Qiannianyaozhai is reportedly the largest Yao village in China, but with less than 200 current residents we veritably have the entire 159-mu grounds to ourselves. Tilling the terraces are barefooted, red-turbaned Yao farmers, regally draped in dark blue robes and scarlet sashes, ancestors of an ancient agrarian society and the last generation.

2pm: Invited for tea in the home of the yaowang village chief of the Pai Yao clan. The simple dwelling is warmed by a wood-burning stove and accentuated with hand-wrought farming tools, whicker baskets and other antediluvian household goods. No modern appliances in site. While Mother mends clothing, Granddaughter chats with us. She must walk four hours every day to attend primary school at the bottom of the mountain.

4pm: Capitalize on the clean air with a long stroll back down the mountain, peeking into other nearby villages and stopping to chat with locals. Everyone is so unbelievably kind it’s a bit shocking; definitely no relation to the Cantonese.

5pm: Spot a woman with a satchel that glows like a rainbow – the Pai Yao’s signature accessory. Females will spend up to three months hand-embroidering their own bags, each with a unique, blindingly-bright design. I attempt a purchase, but she drives a hard bargain. Apparently, some retail high-rollers have already passed through here and set the standard, which is too much for my backpacker budget.

7pm: Dinner at a riverfront restaurant for fresh caoyu grass carp and locally-grown greens, then retire to our luguan boardinghouse for some much-needed sleep.

12am: Awoken by a riotous KTV parlor next door, Mandopop blaring from a pink-glowing room full of high-heeled, mini-skirted xiaojie. I guess no matter how far you stray from the big city, in China some things just don’t change.

Getting there and away: Qiannianyaozhai is well off the beaten path. From Guangzhou City bus terminal, catch the ___am bus to Liannan County, ___ hours, ____ RMB. From Liannan, best to hire a taxi directly to Qiannianyaozhai, 20 RMB (at the time), 30 minutes.

Tickets into Qiannianyaozhai were 30 RMB per person when I was there and contribute to the preservation of this rapidly-vanishing minority culture.

Liannan’s main, and only, drag is comprised of several guesthouses (20 RMB per bed) and one three-star hotel (100 RMB). Xiaojie cost extra.

____________________

Discover Tom Carter’s Guest post On Crime in China. Photojournalist Tom Carter traveled for 2 years across the 33 provinces of China to show the diversity of Chinese people in CHINA: Portrait of a People, the most comprehensive photography book on modern China ever published by a single author.

To subscribe to “Crazy Normal”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

Leave a Comment » | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Chinese minorities, cultural differences, environment, expatriates, history, tourism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The China Backpacker Diaries (Viewed as Single Page)

July 16, 2011

Tom Carter, photojournalist and author

This guest post by Tom Carter first appeared as an eight part series on April 8, 2010 with The China Backpacker Diaries – Part 1

 

 

As a veteran backpacker of both hemispheres, who has traveled extensively throughout all 33 provinces of the People’s Republic of China, this writer has come to depend heavily on hostels. Without them I could not financially (or emotionally) last the months and years I’m expected to be on the road. As such, I’ve brooded on the etymology of the word.

Hostel: a term that has become synonymous with world travel. From the Medieval Latin hospitium, it has been co-opted by over 80 different countries, beginning in 1912 Germany whence originated the idea of the modern youth hostel. Yet in spite of its global popularity, hostelling has continued to remain a relatively underground experience.

Budget backpackers, considered at once hipsters and hobos, rely on hostels for their comparatively affordable accommodations. But youth hostels are also a retreat from the road; a refugee camp for foreigners journeying abroad.

China might have opened its doors to westerners, but we are still strongly urged by the national tourism bureau to check in to pricey hotels while economical boardinghouses, luguan, are for locals only.

Hot destinations, however, like Beijing, Yangshuo and Dali are renowned for their selection of lively hostels. I’ve been to them all, and I’ve seen it all (there ought to be a reality TV series called ‘Backpackers Behaving Badly). There is one hostel I shall especially never forget, where the vibe was so deliciously laid back that my intended two-day stopover turned into seven.

DAY 1: Arrive 8pm in Chengdu, Sichuan’s sweltering capital city, and check into the ‘Stir-Fry’ hostel. The attractive Chinese front-desk staff in short shorts confirms what I’ve heard about Sichuan girls. Get a bed in a 6-bunk dorm and immediately crash out. Woken at 2am by five inebriated Australians returning from a disco vociferously complaining that Chinese girls spend all day playing online dancing games at internet cafés, but at a nightclub they just stand against the wall.

DAY 2: Browse the three-story hostel’s Chinese premises, drying laundry whipping in the wind like the flag of the backpacker. Take a stroll around Chengdu then return to find my previous bunkmates replaced by a guy named Pickle from Hawaii who road a motorbike across Sichuan.

Pickle’s first words to me are “Mind if I smoke a bowl?” At 5 am, a drunk Dutch girl falls into her bunk and passes out in nothing but her g-string. The next morning she tells us “I dreenk haalf day un sleep other haalf. I need to sleep less so I caan dreenk more.”

I would be stupid not to stay another day.

DAY 3: New guy in our room, a University of Oregon grad named Sven (who looks nothing like a Sven). Pickle wakes up at 2 pm and suggests our little American clique have lunch at a Tex-Mex restaurant across town. I feel guilty not eating Sichuan hot pot like I’m supposed to, but my conscience is quickly lost in a world of melted cheese and refried beans.

Nighttime at the Stir-Fry is hopping, the Chinese open-air courtyard crowded with people from every country imaginable sitting around drinking and chatting, their accented conversations invariably beginning with “Where are you from?” followed by “Where are you going?” Happy laughter is a constant. Our world leaders would do well to study life in a hostel.

A British bloke wearing a polo shirt with an upturned collar alternates between hitting on the Chinese front-desk girls (now uniformly wearing size-too-small summer skirts) and asking everyone “Are you going out tonight?”

Me, Pickle and Sven opt for watching the Eli Roth’s blood-and-breasts fest “Hostel” on the lounge DVD player. It’s almost like the Stir-Fry … except everyone gets killed.

DAY 4: Said British bloke, his collar now only half-upturned, is passed out drunk on the lobby couch till late afternoon. He was supposed to have caught an early-morning flight back to the UK, the Chinese receptionist tells us, but they couldn’t wake him.

Evening at the Stir-Fry once again turns out to be quite the social scene. A French guy with tribal tattoos and a Vanilla Ice haircut queues up a jungle drum & bass mix on the lobby sound system and everyone at once stops what they are doing to dance and bob their heads, like a scene out of some musical.

A blonde girl with a nose ring unabashedly drinking backwash out of beer bottles littered around the courtyard convinces Pickle to go with her to a local café named the Pot Palace. I shouldn’t be surprised that such an establishment exists in a province where weed grows wild as a weed.

Pickle returns at 4 am floating. The last he saw of the drunk nose-ring girl, she was fighting with a Chinese taxi driver before running out of the cab without paying.

Day 5: It’s too humid outside, so I beeline to the air-conditioned lounge, where we watch seven pirated DVDs (technically only four because they kept skipping). During this time we visit Africa, various regions of Europe, Los Angeles and prison; it’s almost like traveling! An Italian girl comments, “I shoulda be outsidea meeting Chinesea people anda doinga Chinesea things,” but then settles back in the sofa when the next movie begins.

At night. I chat with a pair of Israeli girls who confide, “We come China to experience culture, but here have too many Israeli backpacker; we can’t escape ourselves!” And meet a young American beatnik double fisting bottles of Snow and Tsingtao (“Dude, they’re both, like, water!”) trying to round up a group to go to the Pot Palace.


It dawns on me that while all these kids are literally blazing through the world looking for a good time, I’ve somehow remained the consummate professional. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I’m ten years older than the average backpacker.

At midnight Sven comes in jovially exclaiming that he found the local pink-light district up by the train station. I’ve wondered where he’s been disappearing too lately.

Day 6: Tex-Mex again for lunch (fifth day in a row!), followed by the Japanese classic ‘Battle Royal.’ A German guy who hasn’t left the DVD room in ten days says that the lazy hostel life is sucking him in. I realize myself that as I still have 12 more provinces to go, I need to either get back on the road or establish permanent residence at the Stir-Fry. It’s a hard choice, but I ultimately opt for the former.

Pickle is having his own dilemma. He had been trying to sell his motorcycle, but the local buyers he lined up cut their offer in half at the last minute. “I’ll be damned if I give in to those thieving b*st*rds. I’d rather drive my bike into the Chengdu River!” he shouts as he revs off down the street.


I don’t know if he’s serious, but we never see the motorbike again. At 11 pm, I watch a baijiu drinking game between one of the Chinese front-desk girls and two Brits who have been living at the Stir-Fry for half a year while working as English teachers.

Day 7: I blearily wake up at 6 am for the first time in a week and go downstairs to check out.

No receptionist to be found. I look around and find the three multinational baijiu drinkers from the night before on the hallway floor. I shake them awake-one Brit crawls off to puke while I turn in my key.

Stepping out of the Stir-Fry for the last time, I look back to see the still-drunk front-desk girl and the other English lad checking doorknobs for an empty room, then stumble in arm in arm. Manchester – Goooooaaaaal!

Note from this Blog’s host: As I finish posting this guest piece from Tom Carter, I think about my daughter’s public school teachers (in California during her junior and senior year in high school), who said the Chinese must be depressed because of their oppressive government.

Then I remember what Peter Hessler, who’s lived in China fifteen years, said about China, “At this particular moment, I think that Americans… might be less happy than Chinese people.”

_______________________

Travel photographer Tom Carter is the author of CHINA: Portrait of a People, a 600-page China photograph book available on Amazon. Help support Tom’s travels by ordering your copy today!

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

Leave a Comment » | America, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese women, cultural differences, expatriates, tourism | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Capturing a Vanishing China

June 23, 2011

I feel compelled to write about a one-star review that appeared recently of Tom Carter’s China: Portrait of a People.

In fact, as I write this post, Carter’s book has had 100 reviews. Eighty-eight earned five stars and eleven four-star reviews. There is only one one-star review.

My wife is Chinese and was born in Shanghai (discover the modern city) during Mao’s Great Leap Forward then was sent to a labor camp as a teen during The Cultural Revolution. When she first saw the photos in Tom Carter’s book, she said he is the first and only photojournalist to capture the heart and soul of China.

What she was talking about was the rural Chinese who have always been the invisible heart and soul of China. If it weren’t for those same rural Chinese, Mao and the Communist Party would have never won China’s Civil War.

What follows is the rambling, rant of a one star review written by someone calling him or herself Xuemin Lin.

Lin says, “Ignorance of all American who think that these photos show the reality China, you don’t know the truth. Tom Carter pictures can only show that poor farmers and rural areas. He ignoring the majority of China’s middle class and developed districts in urban life intentionally. We have a modern apartment and a beautiful new car and stylish clothes. Why Tom Carter just want to show the barefeet farmers and the minorities? His pictures make you believe we Chinese all are swarthy skin and the tooth is not good and make our homes in the mountains area. China’s economy has grown rapidly. The United States owes a debt to total billions of dollars to China. China will soon become a superpower in the world! Han people will lead Asia and then the world. So, do not believe that this book is shows the real China! Tom Carter in a planned way only want to show you the poor! I upload his video got from the Youku website so yourself can see his photos is not the good. Do not by this book I suggest!”

Lin claims that the majority of Chinese belong to the emerging middle class. Lin is wrong. China has a few decades to go until more than a billion people join the modern middle class lifestyle.

Even China’s leaders have admitted that China is not as developed as America or Europe and that China will never rival American super power status. The best China may attain is a regional military super power and a global economic super power.

To understand what I mean, you may want to read Amy Chua’s Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance–and Why They Fall.

It is a fact that China is modernizing at a pace never before seen in history and more than three hundred million Chinese now live in urban cities similar to Shanghai and Beijing and belongs to China’s middle class. However, that leaves about 1.2 billion people that have not yet joined that middle class and 800 million of those people still live as Carter shows us in his photos.

If China accomplishes its goal to modernize most of China and lift the majority of Chinese into the middle class, the world that Tom Carter captured with his photos will vanish. Our only reminder of that China will be his book.

What Lin’s one-star review really reveals is a shame among some Chinese that should not exist. China should be proud of its rural peasants because they have always been the backbone of China and those people deserve their moment in the sun or between the covers of China: Portrait of a People

When I visit China, I want to escape America for a few weeks but realize that I cannot escape the Golden Arches of McDonalds, or Starbucks, Pizza Hut and KFC, which is the worst thing China could adopt from America.  In addition, China has also inherited the obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer that come with this fast food, middle class, and motorcar culture invented in the West.


Some of America’s history captured in photos and song.

In addition, I’ve complained that China has no artist comparable to America’s Charles Russell or Bev Doolittle — great artists that captured the heart and soul of the America that existed before Europe and the industrial revolution arrived to fill the air with poison.

However, Tom Carter’s photos capture some of that world in China that will soon be lost. After China has paved over its past, without Tom Carter’s photos we would never know what that world was like.

Therefore, I ask the Xuemin Lins of China, “What is it you have against Tom Carter capturing what is fast disappearing as China becomes another middle class, smog choked clone of Los Angeles, London, Paris and New York?”

I prefer the China where people are practicing Tai Chi in the early morning fog.

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

7 Comments | America, American culture, capitalism, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese middle class, cultural differences, expatriates | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

China’s Real Karate Kids (view as single page)

June 2, 2011

Guest Post by Tom Carter (photos courtesy of Tom Carter)

“Let’s see your Tiger-Crane style match my Eagle’s Claw!”

Ah, the immortal words of dueling Shaolin warriors. Though dialog like this is mainly the stuff of low-budget Hong Kong movies, there is in fact a place where such challenges are still uttered. Not to the death, of course, but between students at Shaolin Si, China’s most famous Kung Fu temple.

Located atop the western peak of the sacred Song Shan Mountain in northern Henan province, 800 year-old Shaolin Si has been destroyed and rebuilt time and again, weathering attacks by emperors, warlords, cultural revolutions, and now its most reoccurring invaders – the modern tour group.

In fact, not until the advent of the 1970s Kung Fu movie craze and the popular 1982 film “Shaolin Temple,” did annual tourism perform a CGI-like leap from 200,000 to 2 million, prompting the Chinese government to list the temple as a protected heritage site.


But while the venerable temple gates see an almost endless stream of tourists wishing to get a glimpse of a real-life Shaolin monk and take in a demonstration performance, a more permanent residence of Kung Fu enthusiasts exists in the outlying hillsides.

These are the sons and daughters of Shaolin, young students who have given up secular life for a strict regimen and forsaken conventional curriculum for physical conditioning. At Shaolin Si, the sword is truly mightier than the pen.

Kung Fu (Gungfu in Mandarin) was originally a Chan Buddhist practice with the dual purpose of purifying the soul and building strength through Zen spiritual doctrine and martial arts.

Shaolin priests complimented their monastic ways by harnessing their life force with meditation and releasing this energy, or Qi, through practical offense and defense maneuvers, something traditionalists complain has been diluted over the centuries for the thrill of competition and the vanity of exhibition.

Opening up the temple to outsiders began in the mid-16th century, whence military officers of the Ming Dynasty court attended Shaolin to study the monks’ unique fighting techniques. Resultingly, today’s Kung Fu schools have become big business.


The oldest and perhaps most visible school, the Wushu Institute at Tagou, is at the front entrance of Shaolin Si itself. One mountain may have no space for two tigers, says the old Chinese proverb, but the privately run Tagou boasts over ten thousand! The courtyard is at any given moment a killer-bee swarm of students of all ages deftly demonstrating the fluid movement of forms, gravity-defying aerial assaults, an arsenal of weapons techniques and the brute force of striking and grappling.

As it does not seem likely that the People’s Republic will have future need to employ martial monks to defend the country from Wokou raiders as it did in the old days, Kung Fu students of the new millennium will eventually end up common businessmen (with a hell of a roundhouse), some will become police officers, and the bottom percentile relegated to rent-a-cop.

But in all their fearless eyes is that youthfully high hope; the desire to become the next Jet Li, China’s “national treasure” who attended a Kung Fu training school from age 8 and went on to become a five-time Wushu champion and silver screen sensation.

But is real life at a Kung Fu school as glamorous as its on-screen personification?

A few kilometers away from Shaolin Si against the placid waters of Song Shan reservoir, the 11 year-old Shuiku Martial Arts School, with only 200 students, may be dwarfed in both size and reputation by its estimable red-suited rival, but the daily drill is virtually the same.

Whilst the rest of the working world operates on a 9-5 schedule, life at Shaolin Shuiku is literally backwards, from 5am to 9pm. In the blue light of dawn, barking instructors rouse their respective teams for a run in the brisk morning mountain air as Chinese patriot songs echo into the surrounding mountain range.

Stretching, sprinting, fist pushups and other exertive exercises to forge their young bodies into steel take place beneath the rising sun, the packed-earth schoolyard a veritable army of green-uniformed students lined up in formation. A quick cafeteria breakfast is followed by two hours of requisite textbook classes including Chinese, Math and perfunctory English.

Before lunch and then into the evening is the fun stuff – basics, forms, applications and weapons – components of the external (Shaolin) and Wudang, or internal, styles of Kung Fu training. Most can be rudimentarily learned in a matter of years, but take a lifetime to perfect.

Forms, which are actual fighting techniques with the appearance of a choreographed dance, are the most elegant. The animal styles, for example, involve strength, speed and psychology; the Tiger for external force and a strong attack, the softer Crane style for patience and concentration, and so on down the animal kingdom.

For the less graceful student, competitive Sanda sparring more resembles street fighting than poise, whereby the biggest and bravest don protective gear and launch into each other with fists of fury under the corrective eye of their shifu.

Led not by a wizened Master Po, a cruel Pei Mei or any such mythical elder with long white eyebrows, today’s Shaolin shifu (master) are young, burly and surly, some fresh out of Kung Fu school and quick to take a bamboo cane to the backsides of their junior trainees.

In the dark chill of night, the spent students finally retire to their dorm rooms for a semi-normal albeit brief adolescent life – reading comics, watching movies, or, most precious, sleep. The boys share up to ten bunks per room, which look, and smell, accordingly.

Conversely, there are only seven girls at Shuiku, though none admits feeling uncomfortable around the pubescent testosterone of so many “brothers.” With narrow eyes and long, silky black hair, Feng Jing Jing of Shanxi has been a Shaolin student for one year and plans at least another four.

Despite her quiet demeanor, the 17 year-old novice shares a tempered conceit with the rest of her male and female classmates, disdaining an ordinary teenage life of classrooms and tests. “Kung Fu is much easier than English,” Feng Jing Jing asserts while slashing a broadsword in the air with lethal precision.

And what of the parents who are paying for these classes? For them, Kung Fu is an alternative investment into their child’s future. And the earlier they begin, the larger the payoff – they hope.

Cao Xu, 7, who likes doing cartwheels instead of walking, doesn’t seem to mind being away from his mother and father back in Shanghai. Nevertheless, their adult ambitions have obviously been instilled in this little grasshopper’s mind: “I want to be a hero…and earn lots of money!”

Demonstrated by its box-office strength in the western world, the Shaolin lifestyle isn’t only popular with Chinese. 20 year-old Felix Klemisch studied martial arts in his native Germany for four years before hopping on a China-bound plane to pursue his affinity for Kung Fu.

And towering over every other student and trainer at Shuiku is the 190cm Stephan Beck, the school’s foreign veteran with a combined 9 months between two Shaolin schools (he quit the first school after making him stare into the sun for ten minutes a day “to build up [his] Qi”). Also 20 and from Germany, Stephan defies height, gravity and conventions, often training alone while the Chinese students are in group formation.

The two young Europeans confide that communication is a bigger obstacle than the physical ones, and were practically forced to learn rudimentary Chinese to understand their trainers. “We had no choice,” says blonde Felix in heavily accented English. “It was either grasp basic Mandarin or get left behind.”

Neither is sure of what they want to do when they go home and admit the possibility of drifting their way back to Shaolin. In the meantime, shaved-headed Stephan is looking forward to getting away from Song Shan for an upcoming respite in Beijing.

So which will he do first, a climb on the Great Wall? Shopping at Silk Market? “Find a Chinese girlfriend,” he decrees with Shaolin bombast. “I’ve been on top of this mountain too long!”

This post first appeared as a five-part (guest author) series starting June 18, 2010 at China’s REAL Karate Kids, Inside the Kung Fu Schools of Shaolin – Part 1/5

____________________________

Travel photographer Tom Carter is the author of CHINA: Portrait of a People, a 600-page book of photography from the 33 provinces of China, which may be found on Amazon.com.

To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

5 Comments | Buddhism, Buddhist, China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, cultural differences, education, history | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Daughter of Xanadu – Part 4/4

April 20, 2011


A review (guest post) by Tom Carter of Daughter of Xanadu by Dori Jones Yang

By story’s conclusion, Messer Polo, who witnessed and wrote about the Mongols’ real-life battle against the Burmese in his book, The Travels of Marco Polo, has elevated “Emmajin the Brave” into the living legend she wanted to be, though she now regrets it.

“These men needed a hero, but I no longer needed to be one.” She resigns her sword and rank, and departs with Polo back to Europe as the Khan’s emissary of peace, leaving the literary door wide open for a sequel.

Dori Jones Yang, who also penned the best-selling Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, is a skilled historian.

In researching Daughter of Xanadu, Yang, fluent in Putonghua, traveled all the way to the ruins of Xanadu in remote Inner Mongolia, which this itinerant backpacker can personally attest is no easy journey.

The short chapters and brief sentences, edited with razor precision for a younger audience, along with a helpful glossary for ESL students, make reading Daughter of Xanadu a breeze, though adults will admittedly want to beg this book back afterwards from their tweens.

Return to Daughter of Xanadu – Part 3 or start with Part 1

View as Single Page

______________

Travel photographer Tom Carter is the author of China: Portrait of a People (San Francisco Chronicle Book Review), a 600-page China photography book, which may be found at Amazon.com.

Discover more “Guest Posts” from Tom Carter with Is Hong Kong Any Place for a Poor American?

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Chinese minorities, Chinese women, cultural differences, history | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Daughter of Xanadu – Part 3/4

April 19, 2011


A review (guest post) by Tom Carter of Daughter of Xanadu by Dori Jones Yang

Authoress Dori Jones Yang is a Caucasian American, yet she is no stranger to writing from the perspective of conflicted adolescent Chinese girls, as evinced in her previous, award-winning novel, The Secret Voice of Gina Zhang.

In Daughter of Xanadu, she hones in even deeper into the physiological confusion and emotional conflictions that make youth such a joy, turning Emmajin into such a hormonal wreck that this male reviewer often found himself gritting his teeth in frustration at such contradictive revelations as, “if he had pursued me, I would have rebuffed him. By holding himself aloof, he challenged me to win back his esteem.”

Daughter of Xanadu is not all-teenage angst.  As our protagonist matures, so does the content of the story.

Emmajin eventually persuades Khubilai Khan to allow her to train for war against the Burmese at the Battle of Vochan (present-day Yunnan province), where the embarrassment of getting her period in front of the all-male troops is a bloody omen for what’s to come.

Upon seeing her cousin slain, innocent Emmajin is transformed into a “mindless killer.”

  Bloodlust unleashed, the young princess swings her sword indiscriminately (“the hatred pounded in my ears…killing him felt good”), resulting in hundreds of men dead by her hand alone.

One can only imagine all the Mulan vs. Emmajin fan fiction that this novel will inspire!

Continued on April 20, 2011 in Daughter of Xanadu – Part 4 or return to Daughter of Xanadu – Part 2

View as Single Page

______________

Travel photographer Tom Carter is the author of China: Portrait of a People (San Francisco Chronicle Book Review), a 600-page China photography book, which may be found at Amazon.com.

Discover more “Guest Posts” from Tom Carter with Is Hong Kong Any Place for a Poor American?

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Leave a Comment » | China, Chinese Culture, Chinese history, Chinese minorities, Chinese women, cultural differences, history | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

« Previous Entries
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 560 other followers