Tuesday, October 19, 2010

More Chinese Idiosyncrasies

It seems that everywhere I look I see oddities. Not as in ‘carnival’ type oddities, just things that you wouldn’t see in America or in other parts of the world. In no particular order, I list more iconic idiosyncrasies of Chinese people.

Chinese People Marry Chinese, and That is That!: The Chinese are endogamic to a fault. While knowing a foreigner has a certain cachet and dating a foreigner is borderline acceptable, at least in the big cities, marrying a foreigner is strictly taboo. That includes another Asian person: from Laos to Kuala Lumpur, if you are hoping to marry a Chinese girl, you can just forget it. The family will absolutely disown any girl who marries outside of her race and culture, and the more traditional the family is, the more absolute the abandonment is. As the Chinese are very family oriented, most young women will not take a chance on marriage to a foreigner.

Also: there is a dearth of marriageable women in China due to the one-child policy instituted 30 years ago. The science of amniocentesis, coupled with parents’ strong desire for a male heir has caused many female fetuses to be aborted. Add to that the more recent explosion of women’s rights and their appearance in droves into the work force, more and more Chinese women are postponing marriage or foregoing the idea of marrying altogether in favor of pursuing a career. Which leaves a lot of young men without the chance of a partner. Still, traditional Chinese men will not marry a foreigner.

Murses and Purses: Men carry murses. For those of you not in the know, a murse is a man’s purse. Chinese men from all walks of life carry them. Efficient clutches for the business man, over the shoulder bags for the more stylish male, the ‘sling’ model – the strap crosses the chest and back while the bag hangs by the hip – for the up-and-comers. Murses come in all colors, shapes and sizes, and are huge in China. It is a poor man indeed who does not show his status and fashion sense by not sporting a murse.

Conversely, men in love will carry their women’s purse, even though they already sport a murse. The men simply add the purse to the same shoulder that bears the murse. Chinese men do not seem embarrassed to carry women’s purses while strolling with their wives or girlfriends; it seems more of a testimony to their testosterone. It kind of shouts: ‘I’m important enough for a murse, but sensitive enough for a purse!’ It also shouts ‘I have a woman!’ but not quite as loudly (see entry above for the significance of that.)

Belly Air Conditioning: It has been notably chilly and rainy this past week, but these last few days the temperature has again climbed into the high 70’s, and men are air-conditioning their bellies. They are fully clothed: shirt, pants, socks and shoes, but they pull their shirt up and show their belly, presumably to cool off. Generally these men are older and have a bit of a belly, but the practice is not limited to the old, the uneducated or the mah-jongg players who sit around on the curb. College kids (without girlfriends) do it, construction workers do it, just regular men walking down the street with their women do it. You know it is warm when you see exposed male bellies going down the street.

Pick your nose, not your teeth; It is perfectly acceptable in China to pick your nose in public or to actually bend over and blow your nose without the benefit of a Kleenex. At the dinner table or just walking down the street, if thine nose offends thee, pick it! Same goes for sputum: it is OK to simply hock a loogie wherever you are… but they do frown on that in restaurants. They prefer you spit directly into used dishes.

They also frown on you picking your teeth in restaurants – or on the street. The finer restaurants provide toothpicks, however the proper way to pick your teeth is to shield your mouth with one hand while discreetly picking underneath the shield with the other. Kind of like a covert mouth operation that everyone knows is going on, but no one wants to see. Last but not least, NEVER let a toothpick hang jauntily from the corner of your mouth, either at the table or while walking out of the restaurant. You will be sneered at as classless and uncouth.

Strangely enough, while picking your teeth out in the open is bad manners, it is OK to witness someone brushing their teeth. In the more familial neighborhoods of every city I’ve been in over here I’ve witnessed people with toothbrush in one hand and a cup of water in the other, performing their dental hygiene routine in front of whoever may be passing by on the street, and with no qualms whatsoever about it. Spitting at the nearby tree is how the routine if finished. Mouthwash is optional.

The table is dirty: when in the midst of eating you wonder what to do with that chicken bone you’ve just gnawed the meat from, the answer is: put it on the table. Do not look for a dish to put it in, and do not use one of the spare/as yet unused plates for waste. The Chinese consider the table unclean and acceptable for waste of any kind.

Conversely, if you should happen to inadvertently drop a morsel of food on the table, do not pick it up, even if you use your chopsticks to do so. Again, the table being considered unclean, that bite of food is now counted as inedible, even if it looks particularly tasty and appealing.

Potty training is a public act: one of the most radical differences between East and West, or maybe I should say China and the other parts of the world I’ve visited is the method of potty training children. It is not because I make it a habit to be around children, it is just that it is so publicly obvious what is going on. Potty training pants are nothing like in the West. In China, baby clothes have no crotch. The parents have the option of diapering their children, but more often than not, the baby’s nether regions are exposed because of the way the pants are designed.

Potty training starts as early as 3 months old when, at certain intervals, the parent holds the child’s legs open and dangles its exposed private parts over a trash can (at home) or a nearby tree (while out and about). The child’s back rests against the parent’s chest and the parent encourages the child to just let it rip. Sometimes just blowing on the ‘privates’ achieves results; other times whistling or dripping water ‘there’ works. As the child’s age increases, so do the intervals in which he/she is hoisted up, legs spread, to pee. After the child is old enough to vocalize his/her need to urinate, the squat is taught: the parent squats down in such a way that the squatting child is ‘spooned’, and the child is encouraged to void him/herself. I couldn’t tell you at what age the children pants become ‘crotched’, but I have seen children as old as 4 years (by appearance; I really don’t know their actual age) with these crotch-less pants.

I didn’t think this would go on this long, but the more I look around, the more I see that is just… iconic and idiosyncratic to the Chinese. I may have to write another one of these, someday.

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