I Didn't Know...

I've never claimed to be the know-all and end-all of China and Chinese culture, and I never will. To wit: even 5 years on, little tidbits of facts previously unknown to me still have the power to rock me, shock me and give me pause. Here are a few nuggets.

Single mothers:

Until recently I thought it was only a social taboo to have a baby out of wedlock in China, as it was in the west until about 30 years ago. An enlightening article in ChinaDaily clued me in to the fact that it is not just frowned upon but illegal. According to that text, a woman must furnish a marriage certificate as well as a 'valid reproduction permit' and, of course, an ID. 

Here is that revealing article: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2015-08/07/content_21524131.htm

Color me perplexed! With my still-predominently western mindset I can't believe that, in this day and age, when women can ensure financial stability for themselves, they are still required to be married in order to have a child.  Never mind the incredible 'old maid' standard rained on a woman who has not married by age 30 by family and friends, this information makes that proclamation quaint.

Now I understand why Stephanie had to get married, even though her family was opposed to the union and she didn't seem too happy about it herself (See How I spent my May Day holiday, posted May of this year).

Making The Bed:

I've attended several weddings in China, and they all follow a certain pattern, but for a few variances. Two things I had no idea about, that make me shake my head in disbelief: who should make the nuptial bed up for the wedding night, and how.

Apparently, a mother of both a boy and a girl should make the bed, in the belief that the good fortune she enjoys at having a matched set of children will rub off on the sheets, and the new couple will be just as lucky. Sam's mother, who has been thus blessed, is often called on in her village to make up the wedding night bed.

Never mind the fact that science has proven that it is fathers who offer up the extra chromosome that determines their offspring's gender. I'm  not sure if the Chinese still hold to the long since dispelled belief that it is the woman's onus to assign fetal gender, or if it is 'double joy' maternal hands that are thought to bless the sheets. It could just be that making beds is 'women's work'. Either way: this is a rather charming superstition that caused me to chuckle in disbelief.

Another strange custom is to litter the marital bed with peanuts. Whether shelled or not, I have no clue. Presumably, these peanuts will encourage a Little Peanut to soon issue forth. All I could think about after hearing that is the exhaustion a just-married couple must feel after the day-long celebration, only to enter the marital suite and have to sweep peanuts off the bed. Should the couple eat the peanuts? Who is to retrieve the peanuts: the bride, the groom or both? Those answers remains a mystery. 

Such traditions, thoughts, superstitions and beliefs are what made me fall in love with China to begin with. I scoff at these most recent additions to my list of seemingly nonsensical wisdoms, but it is a loving scoff, like one you would give your somewhat addled relative when s/he doesn't realize s/he's doing something utterly goofy. 

However, this next one terrified me...

Friends and family are responsible for hospitalized patients.

I've had some dealings with hospitals in China: when I bashed my head in and needed stitches, to have my thyroid levels checked and, most recently because of my broken leg, all done on an outpatient basis. I visited Gary in the hospital when his appendix ruptured, but gained no clue on the mysteries of inpatient dealings at that time.

I've often wondered why pajama-clad patients are permitted to roam around hospital grounds. In the case of the military hospital I always go to when needing medical care over here, patients wander as far as the shopping centers and restaurants across the street – also in their pajamas. From my limited experience with hospitals in the west - in Germany and America, once you are in the hospital, you stay in the hospital until you are discharged: no roaming outside allowed. In America, I've not been allowed to walk out of the hospital upon discharge: an orderly pushed me out in a wheelchair (presumably, every hospital in America follows that policy: whether you can walk or not, your trip out of the hospital is made in a wheelchair). 

Hospital food: the joke of the American health care profession. “The doctors are great but the food will kill you!” as one old saw goes. Now that health care in America is a for-profit business, hospitals compete for patients. Thus they offer private rooms and restaurant quality food. If your illness requires special foods, your diet is carefully monitored and outside food is frowned on. Likewise are over-the-counter medicines not allowed:  you cannot take any medication the doctor does not approve of, and what is approved must be dispensed from the hospital pharmacy.

It was my most recent visit to the hospital in Wuhan to have my leg X-rayed that opened my eyes about hospital care in China. My curiosity was aroused when I saw non-medical personnel pushing hospital beds into the X-ray department so the supine patients could be imaged. This time accompanied by Penney, a nurse in said hospital, I asked her my burning questions regarding health care in China.

Health care professionals are too busy to push gurneys, I found out. If a patient needs an X-ray, there had better be someone who can get the patient to the imaging department. Meals are also dependent on friends and relatives: the hospital does not deliver food to patients' bedsides.

“What if the patient has diabetes, and is on a special diet?” I asked.

“Most likely, the family will follow doctor's orders and only bring food that the patient can eat.” Penney replied.

“You work in the 'contagious disease' unit where family and friends cannot visit. How do those patients get food?”

“Friends and family bring it and we inspect it before giving it to the patients.”

That did not make sense to me at all. People in quarantine receiving outside food? How could that be? And what if a patient has no one to bring any food?

NOTE: when I say 'friends and family bring food', I don't necessarily mean home cooked meals. I've seen take-out containers from street food vendors make their way into patients' rooms. Street food vendors, whose carts line the sidewalks and whose food supplies linger in the open air for hours, a perfect opportunity for gastric distress, especially for someone lying in the hospital, whose immune system might already be compromised. 

Quite frankly, I live in fear of having to be hospitalized over here. Not just because I would have to share a room with... who knows how many other people, and that the bathroom would be down the hall. Not just because the accommodations would not be as luxurious as the ones I enjoyed when I broke my leg in America. And not just because the few treatments I've been subject to here have been brutal, to say the least, but because a hospital stay over here would be so far out of my range of experiences, I'm fearful I wouldn't adapt. To say nothing of not being able to understand what the doctor and nurses are saying because of my limited Chinese. 

I'm sure Sam, Penney and Gary, among other friends, would be prominent presences during my incarceration, and surely they would bring food. They would probably push my bed all over the hospital if need be. Nevertheless, as open to new experiences as I usually am, this is one I'd rather not have. I don't think anyone could blame me.

What a joy it is to live in a place where, even though I've memorized entire bus routes and find myself caught up in daily life, there are still things that can move me, amuse me and floor me with shock and disbelief. Any wonder why I stay? 

That 'First Foreigner' Feeling!

Much is said about what we expats are exposed to at the hands of our Chinese neighbors: the stares, the inane questions – I was once asked if I brush my teeth! The touching and all of the other questions that, I swear: if I hear them one more time, my head will explode! What about when we foreigners saw a foreigner for the first time?

I launch that question at my students: what was their first experience with a foreigner? And I tease them with the promise of my own 'first foreigner' experience, after they disclose theirs. Invariably I'm met with puzzled stares: I AM a foreigner. How can I meet a foreigner??? 

Now, I'm dating myself...

My family moved to America in 1964, the year the Civil Rights Act was signed into law. From then on, Americans were not allowed to discriminate based on race, gender or religious preference. Until then existed a painful segregation: Whites lived here and Blacks lived there. Whites ate here and Blacks ate there. White children went to these schools and Blacks to those schools. Intergration did not happen overnight, but in the military environment – on the bases and housing areas, it happened much faster than elsewhere in America.

I was a little thing then, only about 2 years old when we moved to the states. I was not aware of anything regarding race or much of anything else. One of my earliest memories is of a girl with ebony skin, kinky hair bound in pink barettes and the brightest teeth I'd ever seen: Valerie. She stood on the sidewalk and I was on our scrubby patch of front lawn. We eyed each other warily, like 2 dogs who don't yet know they are not enemies. I remember her name to this day, because she was my first 'foreigner'. I must have been about 3 years old, as corroborated by my parents.

Valerie had a different way of talking. She skipped rope and played differently than I did. She kept having to pull up her panties, startling white against her black skin. Her clothes seemed poorly made and she didn't wear any shoes when I first met her. Nevertheless, we became friends. She let me touch her wild hair and I let her touch my silky tresses. 

As military families are wont to do, we moved on, sometime when I was about 5 years old. I am sure that, by that time, I was used to 'Black'. I simply thought Black people were only black on the parts we could see: hands, arms, maybe legs and certainly face. For some reason I was convinced that the parts we couldn't see had to be white, like my parts that nobody saw.

Imagine my surprise when, after a few days living in a run-down neighborhood in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, a young man across the street was washing his car. He was Black, and had his shirt off. That's when I found out that 'they' were Black through and through!

Go ahead, laugh. I do, when I recall my dismay.

The school year started: my first year of school! Even though the Civil Rights Act was nearly 3 years in effect, our class was still somewhat segregated: boys here and girls there. Black boys in the back left of the room and Black girls to the right, behind the White girls. Inevitably, there was tension at recess.  Kids are kids and there was a lot of playground name-calling and fighting. During one such brawl, I was pushed backward off the bench I was sitting on. I landed on my left elbow and shattered bones from my clavicle to my fingers.       

There are a few distinct images of that awful, painful time: someone from the school (a woman) driving me home. I sat in the front seat, cradling my shattered left arm. My mother, rushing to the curb and yanking the door open, gently prying my fingers loose so she could see the damage. From there, somehow we ended up at a hospital, with me sitting on a consult table, still holding my arm. A large Black man with glasses, a bass voice and frizzy hair just beginning to gray approached me. His white coat was as startling against his dark skin. I wouldn't let him touch me. Was it because he was Black or because my arm hurt so much I didn't want anyone to touch it? Maybe a bit of both.

Dr. Sylvester – yes, I remember his name, too, talked with my mother. I'm fairly certain she agreed to have me sedated for treatment because the next thing I remember was lying in my bed at home, with a cast running from my left fingertips to my right shoulder. That must have been a terrible time for my poor, young psyche because I only have fragments of memory left over.

The next year, the year Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and America broke out in riots, my mother moved us back to France. There, my world went 'full White'; African immigrants had yet to start the flood that would soon overwhelm the French economy. Georges Pompidou was Prime Minister, later president. We lived with my mother's aunt until a subsidized apartment became available and, once again I lived with nuclear family: mother, sisters and brothers. Father was left behind in the divorce.

No, I wasn't politically aware when I was 6 years old. I got that from research. 

I believe it was my early exposure to another race and having Valerie for a friend that tore down the barriers of prejudice for me. At a young age I learned that people are people, no matter what their skin color or language might be. But it didn't stop the fascination the Black culture held for me: their dances, their foods, their clothing style and mannerisms and religion and speech. I had a chance to fully explore those aspects of Black culture in my teens, when my mother remarried (another American soldier) and we moved to Berlin, Germany.

Again in the military environment, where segregation was minimal, 'Black' was all around. Anyone interested could partake of Soul Night – 'Black' music played at the local disco, Soul Food served at the cafeteria, and  anyone could buy wildly colorful clothing that Blacks seemed to prefer. The base's shopping center, called the PX stocked products for African American hair care. I remember gazing at them in awe, and later seeing such products put to use when I babysat Barbara Yulee's daughters.  

I'd like to paint myself as having always been open to other cultures, races and ethnicities but the truth is that, for many years, in spite of my acquaintance with the Black culture (and later, other cultures) I still sniggered at racists joke and even made a few myself. I'm now ashamed of how I helped perpetuate negative stereotypes.

I'm making up for it, though. I made it a point of telling my students about my experiences, emphasizing that people are people no matter what color or creed. Just as my charges have beliefs and feelings and needs and wants, so do people of other ethnicities. Hopefully I can help broaden their world so that they don't believe negative information about foreigners who are now pouring into their, till recently exclusively Chinese world. 

For Profit

Such great news! Evenflo, that company specializing in baby products has designed a car seat that will sound an alarm once the car is turned off, notifying the driver that Baby is in the car. What a great idea!

Evenflo has partnered with Walmart to be the exclusive distributor of its advanced technology car seat. For one year that mega-store, with branches all over the world will offer this extra-protective device, a must for anyone with a small child who regularly rides in cars. The seat's price is competitive: about the same as other carseats without that safety feature.

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/24/health/walmart-car-seat-hot-car-deaths/index.html 

Wait a minute... That idea resonates...

In 2008, Google hosted a 10 to the 100^th competition to celebrate its 10 years of operation. Contestants were to submit ideas that would improve the world in some way: environment, energy conservation, help for handicapped and other life saving or life improving innovations.

According to statistics, more than 35 children die in hot cars every year in America alone. I had long been thinking of a car seat design with a built in pressure sensor that would 'feel' the weight of a child, so that if Baby is strapped in when the car's ignition is turned of, an alarm would sound. I was in the process of writing up a patent application for this design when Google announced the competition.

Rather than wrangle through legal channels to protect my intellectual property with a patent, and then spending years trying to find companies that would develop the idea, I submitted it to Google, complete with a demonstration video. And then, nothing.

Because so many ideas had been submitted, the Google judges were taking longer than expected to read through all of the suggestions and watch all of the videos. In fact, it took more than 2 years for that internet giant to pay out its promised prize: 10 million dollars, divided among the winners, to be spent on research and development of their idea.

Don't start thinking that I'm bitter and resentful that I didn't  win, and I didn't get any prize money. My idea was to save lives: any child's life and the lives of the families that would be shattered because their baby was left in the car (or daycare van, as has also happened). While chasing a patent I had approached a non-profit organization with the idea, hoping that they would help develop and market the finished product. I was waiting for their response when Google announced its competition. I thought: “That would be a great way for this idea to gain exposure!”

Now, 7 years after submitting an idea for saving children's lives, the giant of baby products has engineeered a car seat that would indeed save lives. I should be happy, right?

I am happy that such a car seat exists and hope that every parent buys one. I'm actually hoping every car seat maker implements that technology and that only carseats with sensors will be available for purchase. What I'm not happy about is the exclusive arrangements.

Evenflo has declared proprietary technology over car seats with their type of built-in sensor. That corporation and Walmart have struck a deal where such car seats are available only at that retail giant. 

Shouldn't the goal of such life-saving technology be saving lives, not generating profits exclusively for the companies in question?

Life should not always be about profit. Life can be as simple as an idea meant to save lives, or improve life. We see this all the time in China: ordinary people devising ingenious contraptions to help their loved ones or building necessary equipment with no foreknowledge of mechanics. 

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/trending/2015-04/14/content_20430153_2.htm

My friends, if you must see me as resentful after all this, see me as resentful that a good idea – whether mine or not (and it might not be), meant to spare babies and their families agony is being used first as a profit generator, and only incidentally as a life-protecting device. I'm resentful that child safety advocates tolerate this blatant abuse of commercialism instead of lobbying the government that only car seats with such technology be manufactured, and that older car seats be retro-fitted with the new technology. I'm resentful that the American government can legislate at will but apparently turns a blind eye to Evenflo and Walmart securing a monopoly of these advanced-technology carseats – and monopolies are illegal in America.

But then again: Texas enacted a law allowing people to carry their guns openly while out in public, but refuse to enact a law against texting while driving, saying it would infringe on people's rights. Why should I be surprised that safety laws are trumped by profit generation?

Would I resent a pile of money shoved my way? I'll be honest: no, I wouldn't. But, for me, it's never been about money. It's always been the horror that children sometimes get left in cars, a horror that everyone must surely share.

And if that's the case, how can Evenflo and Walmart cash in on horror???

On Marriage

A couple of months back, one of my Chinese friends came to visit. We were enjoying coffee and conversation when, all of a sudden, he pops off with: “I'm getting married.” Color  me poleaxed! Isn't that the sort of announcement one rushes to tell friends, breathlessly and full of excitement? That wasn't the case here. Joe dropped his news casually, mid-conversation, as though he were telling me he would eat dinner out that night.

Much is being made of romance, finding one's true love, and 'love conquers all' in China these days. The divorce rate is staggering, reportedly because there is no love to the union or the romance has faded, although other factors also make the list: deceit, or getting a better apartment, for example. Meanwhile I, romantic at heart but disbelieving of the soulmate myth – there's someone for everyone or the German version of it: for every pot there's a lid... I, long-time single, ponder the marriage question.

Marriage, by definition, is the union of two or more complementary elements: pork and peppers, peanut butter and jelly, jazz and blues, man and woman. However, one can enjoy jazz and not like blues, eat peanut butter with bananas and serve pork with other vegetables. Human marriages are stretching traditional definitions: America has recently legalized homosexual marriage, a step behind other countries. But human marriages almost always come down to love, don't they?

Or do they? Why do people get married these days?

About a month after Joe's marriage announcement, we were again enjoying a visit. He started talking about wedding plans and asked me to attend his wedding in October. Of course I agreed and, since he opened the subject, I asked a few questions.

“What about your new apartment that you are decorating to suit your tastes? How will your wife fit in it?”

“She will keep living at her house and I will live at mine.”

“What about when you have a baby?”

“Baby will live with my mama. Mama lives close to me.”

By this time, I'm not exactly understanding this marriage. He explained:

“She loves her work, and earns a lot of money. She does not want to let her life go just because she marries. Her work is close to her home now, and far away from my home or work. It is better this way.”

I can certainly understand her wanting her independence and not give up her work but I can't understand how this marriage is going to work.   

I think about all of the good marriages I know: Chuck and Marjorie, George and Chris, Ann and Ron, Sam and Penny. These are long-time married folks with the exception of Sam and Penny, but those 2 are no less devoted to each other than my other friends who've been in it for the long haul. All of the good marriages I know of are true partnerships that require a lot of compromise and a lot of work no matter how long they've lasted.

Contrast that with this young couple I'm acquainted with, who got married last year and now have a 2-month old baby. He went to another city for work because there are no good teaching positions in his village. His wife had the baby on her own, and then moved back in with her parents so they could help take care of baby. The new father returned home, his teaching done for the summer and, rather than seek out his wife and child, he headed to his parents' home and agreed to a divorce via text message.

What did they get married for???

Perhaps it is my mindset: one should fulfill one's obligations and keep one's promises. Maybe that is what makes me shudder at how this marriage died. And maybe there is a dash of hopeful romantic in me. He married her, after all. He should have brought her to the big city and been there to support her, instead of chastising her for weakness when she cried, long-distance, that she needed him. He should at least meet his baby, if not commit his life to her. Shouldn't he?  

The Chinese Formula for Life:

From birth to early 20s: education.

After graduation: find a job.

Once established in a career: get married, have a child.

This formula, once successful in this society is now damaging it. These days, people are not happy to just do their duty and bear the burden of convention. More and more, couples want romance, love, and status brought by material things: a fine home, a nice car, the latest gadget. They drive themselves to the very pinnacle of success, sacrificing everything in the process, including the possibility of lifelong partnership and the emotional/psychological well-being of their offspring. 

Offspring: in spite of looser social standards, having a baby out of wedlock is still taboo in China. Thus, people get married, have a child and then split up. Sometimes, both parents leave, and the child is left with an older family member, or maybe even just a villager. We already see the damage done to 'left-behind' children. Suicides, attachment issues, psychological problems such as depression and fear of abandonment. What about this new generation of children, foresaken by one parent or the other in favor of a better life?

What does this mean for the future of China? Do Chinese sociologists have to rethink what it means to be family? Maybe if the stigma against divorce and bastard children is lifted... Or should the government step in and enforce family values over emotional ties and/or materialistic desires? Is this yet another birthing pain of modern Chinese society? Are marriages of convenience becoming the norm?

Is that what Joe and his intended are doing?

Possibly. Joe is a mid-30s businessman. Regardless of his professional success, his family is continuously hounding him for a daughter-in-law and an heir. Maybe her family is raining the dreaded 剩女 'sheng nu' – 'old maid' phrase on her. Perhaps the two know each other professionally and have entered a pact of sorts to help each other save face with their respective families, without changing their lives as they are now.

Is there any love between them?

I don't know. Even though Joe is a weekly visitor here, I've yet to meet or even see a picture of this girl, and he doesn't talk about her much.

I wonder why a person in this day and age would have to marry, but then continue to live a single life that has worked so well for him/her.