Myth-making in China

I don’t know what I was expecting when I first came to China.  I knew that I wouldn’t be picking up the language or some Kung Fu or finding enlightenment in a Buddhist temple or becoming the first man to discover a shopper’s paradise.  I knew I could expect Blade Runner cities and Dickensian conditions.  But nothing could prepare me for my own ignorance, especially my inability to find its remedy.

Concrete answers to simple questions were seemingly nonexistent.  Direct questions elicited maybes.  Ask and you shall receive a tea-stained smile and don’t-ask-why-just-be-shy attitude.  Getting a straight answer was like  practicing frontier dentistry in the Wild West.   Then I realized the most expedient way to fill in the cavities was to use my own imagination and make myths.

Maybe years from now after I scale the Great Wall of the Mandarin I will be able to shed more light on some of the strangeness in China.  But for now laowai mythology will have to suffice.  What follows is a stranger’s attempt to make sense of strange land.

The Village of Maybe

Once upon a time somewhere in China there was a village where somebody once told somebody else to do something.  Maybe somebody said something about tile production.  Unfortunately, the teller and the told came from different villages.  Thus, they spoke different dialects.

Miscommunication ensued and it  was unclear if tile production should be increased or decreased.    The one being told thought he would lose face if he asked for clarification, and took it upon himself to err on the side of boosting the economy.  Thus, tile production increased.   Unfortunately, orders had actually come from higher-up to decrease tile production.  Justice was swiftly executed:  Since the receiver had more guangxi, the sender ended up spending retirement in a rice paddy.

Ever since that fateful day, anything and everything has been prefaced with the word “maybe.”  That way, both communicators are protected from liability.  And this is why everything in China is vague and possible. Nobody wants to be held accountable should their answer come back to haunt them.  In effect, all communication should be as slippery as rain-slicked tile.

The Evil Demon

How many evil demons can fit on the tip of a chopstick?  What passes for a jury here is still out, but it may be surmised that for every laowai in China there is one evil demon who monitors his or her internet usage.  The evil demon, not to be confused with its omnipotent western cousin, Descartes’ Evil Daemon, is a creature that doesn’t seem to take its job very seriously.  This is why you can google or wiki certain topics one moment, and then for some inexplicable reason your connection with cyberspace is severed.

The best way to get around this is to confuse or placate the demon.  One strategy is to shake it off your tail by searching for things like “Mid Level Luxury in Modern China” or “Modest Economic Development Preserves Environment and Increases Harmony Overall.”  Once the demon is lulled into complacency, you have a chance to search the web with impunity for such things as a good florist to supply your dinner party with a hundred flowers.  Also, the best time to conduct a web quest is during lunchtime as this is when a majority of evil demons are drunk on baijiu.

Tale of the Tile Factory

Once upon another time there was a tile factory.  After Reform and Opening, the race to modernize the country’s bathroom décor began.  This is how the nation solved its tile surplus and why many sidewalks and even some streets are paved in tiles.  There were even enough tiles left over to overlay all the new buildings with a glaze of modernism.  See above, “The Village of Maybe.”

The National Sound

Amongst many other adverse health effects, the poisonous atmosphere butchers the respiratory tree in a manner similar to chronic tobacco smoking.  When this happens, your airway thickens, and the mucociliary elevator becomes as reliable as a 3^rd tier city’s hotel elevator.  Thus, most inhabitants have to resort to manually hawking up lugies lest they drown in their own phlegm.

During the winter time, well-preserved specimens litter the sidewalks.  Analysis reveals the contents to be composed of phlegm, soot, microbes, carbon monoxide, and a cocktail of some 4,000 toxins, mutagens, and carcinogens.  Some say that in years to come a fellowship of immigrants, natives, and sentient machines will one day band together to terraform the Eastern hemisphere and create a Green City on a Hill.  And the National Sound will become of the stuff of nostalgia.

The Orwellian Watchtowers

Towers are interspersed throughout the cities and some of the highways of Hunan province.  They look like retrofuturistic flying saucers on a stick.  Maybe they are relics of a bygone era; now even the bathroom tiled buildings of New China rise above them.

I have never visited one, but there is a hatch at its base, and you can climb up the ladder through a hollow tube where you will find yourself in a round room – kind of like Seattle’s Space Needle – where Red Guards with jet packs and Hello Kitty™ plastic arm sleeves constantly sip tea, aim telescopes at the streets, and compile a list of traffic violations for review by a bureau located somewhere in the provincial capital. Maybe this is where the evil demon lairs.

What would Confucius do if he had a car?

In America many illustrious leaders are guided by the motto, “What would Jesus do?”  Amongst other factors, this question has helped to craft wise decisions regarding policies both foreign and domestic — including the one leading to a war on an abstract noun.

Perhaps the Chinese can adapt a similar version of enlightened Western thinking to benefit their society as well.  Imagine how harmonious your city’s neighborhood would be if every citizen was issued a “What Would Confucius Do?” bracelet after they earned their driver’s license?

Then the primordial chaos of man-eat-man traffic would coalesce into an orderly hierarchy ranging from lowly and humble pedestrian to the high-ranking coal truck.  And the Middle Kingdom would no longer be barbarized by such barbarian inventions as the automobile.

Bucklers of Goober Resistance

The latest in the armamentarium of Neo Traditional Chinese medicine, plastic arm sleeves act as a combo arm warmer and spit deflector shield.  The Hello Kitty™ patterned bucklers actually boost charisma, immunity to H1N1, and wards against evil húli jīng fox spirits.   Please check out my website, where you can peruse an online catalog, and order a pair in your favorite color, pattern, or cartoon character.  Friendly operators in Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.A. are standing by to stand by to take your order.