I'm Dam'd - In A Good Way :)

The Yichang Travel Card has been a real success story. A day after I saw the Yangtze Sturgeon Research Centre, I went to the dam. And this time, I saw it! Nizar, Anoop and I did have some trouble getting there but all in all it was a pretty good trip.

I guess it is a huge blot on your travel credentials if you haven't seen the most famous place in your city. The Three Gorges Dam [SanXia DaBa - literally Three Gorges Big Dam] is the largest hydroelectric power project in the world and possibly, the only claim to fame for our humble little city of Yichang [other than our university, of course!]

Even though the weather wasn't the greatest on Saturday - rainy and foggy - our little team braved the cold and set out to conquer one of the modern wonders of technology. After my visit to the Sardar Sarovar dam last winter, I must say I appreciate dams more and I was looking forward to the trip. More importantly, I didn't want to repeat my failure the last time I tried a similar trip.

I had never really cared about the dam [before last winter] but I did want to give it a look-see as it was really famous. So, when Brad's students were looking for travel companions to the dam, I put my hand up. The students had signed us up with one of the tour groups operating in the campus for the holidays. Our little group comprising Brad, 5 Chinese students and I met one fine morning to board a bus which I presumed would take us to the dam.
It took us to the GeZhou dam, the smaller, older and almost unknown cousin of the Great Three Gorges. They told us that the rest of the journey would be on a boat, which sounded even better. We had an up-close view of the single-stage shiplock at the GeZhou in action. I had heard that the shiplock at the Three Gorges was a 5 stage one and now it sounded more than impressive.
I was a bit worried about the time though because it felt that we were already running late. But the boat soon shoved off on its pleasant trip up-river. This little tourist boat had its own in-house souvenir shop and the sweet lady running it and I, got talking on whatever topics my limited Chinese allowed [which weren't many]. We also met other people on the boat, including another one of Brad's students [no surprise there] and a group of University students who had come down from Wuhan just to see the Great dam.
It was around lunch time when we got to our next stop. Even though we were getting worried about the limited time left to see the dam, the extra scenic spot wasn't bad. It was themed around one of the great poets of ancient China and the place was pretty pleasing to the eye.
Once we were done with this stop though, our patience was beginning to wear thin. It was getting really late and we were relieved when the boat started again.

And then it resumed its journey - downstream.
This was surprising because the dam was just a little way off - in the opposite direction! Our friends Rick and Steve found out that we were not going to the dam afterall. This wasn't the news we wanted to hear but our fellow passengers didn't seem to mind. I went and talked to the lady at the souvenir shop and that's when I learned that a trip to the dam by this tour company would have cost more than what we had payed. It seemed that the tour agent at the university had tricked us. We were just getting the trip we payed for, which, was not the trip to the dam.
Have you ever been in a situation where you were planning to go to one place and end up in a totally different one at the end of the day and someone tells you - Oops wrong bus... that's how I felt! We tried talking to the tour guides on the boat who said there was nothing they could do about it - "We can't reach the agent right now", "We can't reach our boss right now", "We can't turn back the boat, its too late in the day for a dam trip now". Our friends were feeling miserable because they were the ones who had arranged for our tickets and so it didn't seem fair to vent my frustration just yet.
What did seem to be the right time was when I found out that all the other people in the boat had also been under the impression that we were on our way to the dam; the agent had duped us all! But now that we were not, they were all sitting around dejected. Just sitting!!

Wake up people!! You've just been taken on a wild goose chase! Been cheated off your time and money!! Oh... umm... *talk**talk**take pictures**talk more*
We figured that's why some people here like to drink the nasty baijiu. They had just been cheated off a day but they didn't want to do anything about it - except get back on baijiu that night and drink to "We got ripped off - again!" You need something strong to take away your sorrows I guess...

The poor girl from Wuhan started crying because they had just spent the night in Yichang so that they wouldn't be late for the trip! This ignited some fire under the other boys with her and they found some sympathisers in the group to go and talk to the man in charge. For a minute there, I thought they might just get the boat turned around and restore some sanity. But the guy who was driving the boat just came out of the engine room, won a quick victory in the shouting match, and continued on his way.
I just could not believe all the rest of the people on the boat! I even took a picture of all of them just sitting around - it was one of the strangest and saddest sights I've ever seen. People without the will to fight for their right.


After that experience behind me, I was glad to see the dam yesterday, the whole enormity of it, and things got better when I ended the day with free pizza courtesy of Amitha, a treat for the house-warming back in India.
A wish come true and a full stomach, what more can you ask for?

Lifting walls

This is just an update. I once spoke about the banning of websites here in China and so I feel it is my duty to update things.
Blogger is no longer blocked here. The unblocking happened sometime during the holidays, probably before the Olympics.
Wikipedia of course has been available for a year now. I don't know about the editing though, since I've never tried that. [me? make a Wiki entry??]
I'm not sure about Xanga though... think it's still banned.

T-shirts in English

A lot has been said about the 'English' on Chinese T-shirts which usually display anything from a random set of alphabets to strange word combination to snippets of offensive newspaper articles and novellas. And so it has been good to notice some decent T-shirts the past few days which actually have something to say...
"Is your cup half emtpy or half full"
"Tibet, Taiwan and Diaoyu Islands were, are and will always be part of China"

Aftershock

All the Chinese websites are in black and white now as a whole nation mourns this tragedy.
As the rescue work drags on, the toll has been rising. The thunderstorms aren't helping too much either.
It certainly is a sign of strength as all the Chinese people come together to help out. It's impressive how fast the funds have been raised but the enormity of this disaster seems to demand it.
I don't really know how well the rescue operations are going but from all I have seen and heard it certainly has increased my respect for the Chinese people.
We are with you.

Security Risks

There is a McDonalds on the second floor of the Shenzhen railway station and its entrance from the main walkway was shut.




Apparently they are worried about the security risk it would pose for the Olympics which is three months and a thousand kilometers away, in Beijing.

The Great Wall of China

No, I'm not talking about one of the 7 wonders of the world, but it's still a wonder to me.

Allow me to explain.
The West gate of my university leads to a small street, on both sides of which, there are shops and little restaurants. The Chinese called in "Snack street" while we Indians prefer the name "Food market". It really does have a strong market feel to it especially during rush hour when the street is basically clogged with students of all shapes and sizes.
Yesterday, a friend and I decided to have an early dinner and walked to the West gate. Instead of the familiar worn out iron gate, we saw a new, fresh brick wall! Once we managed to fix our gaping jaws back in place, we tried staring at the small Chinese notice board in front of the wall hoping that some part of this mystery might be solved. Neither of us were too knowledgeable in the area of Chinese reading comprehension and so I was really glad when my Chinese friend Johnson showed up. He told us that the University had decided that the food market was too dirty for the students. We wanted to find out more and so Johnson took us on his bike out through the North gate, around the campus and dropped us off at the other end of snack street.
We talked to some people and this is what we found out.
All shops along the street had been ordered to pack up and leave by the 20th of April. [They had three weeks notice] To make sure they did, the student access to the place had been blocked off by a neat wall on the 14th. The street was going to be "beautified" and "developed" with new shops coming up and would reopen on 30th June. The present rent they had to pay for putting up their food shacks was 400 yuan. They had no idea how much the new rent would be. Even other establishments not in the immediate path of this "beautification" were considering closing down for 3 months because the wall would restrict student access. Half the shops have already closed down while the others are waiting to see how many people would still take the trouble to visit snack street in the post-wall era.

Again, there are many things I learned from this.
One, the Chinese are fast builders. That wall just took one afternoon to build. I can already imagine how some Chinese student had gone down to one of the Internet cafes by snack street in the morning and when he came back that evening he found a tall wall blocking his path. Talk about rapidly changing skylines...
Two, China can never fail to surprise me. I come from a place where anything can trigger strikes. People just take to the streets, create a scene and we students get holidays. The only laws passed without much trouble are the ones supporting salary hikes. No one can take anything away from you unless you let them. And even then, there are others who can't stand it. I know there is a lot lacking in that situation and there are quite a lot of problems, but it's a crazy free world. And in no way can I understand the blind subservient obedience of these people! They probably run whole families with that one shop and now they they cannot run their little shops for 3 months with no idea about what will happen after that. Yes I can see the development. There will be new beautiful shops with licenses, things will be cleaner and look a lot better... no wonder China is developing so quickly. They don't care who they have to step on. Why should they? The person being stepped on doesn't care either.

Or maybe they cannot do anything even if they cared.

Or maybe I just cannot understand because I'm an Indian.

Cross cultural hurdles

Last week I was in the Hepatology dept. and was talking to one of the doctors there. Out of the blue, he asked me what I thought about Chinese economy. I started out on a winding comparison of Indian and Chinese economies when he cut in and said,"No, not economy... just China." Observing my puzzled expression, he asked me,"Where would you like to live, India or China?" My answer was of course India and he wanted to know why I didn't choose China. "Less freedom", I promptly answered. He looked rather sad when I said that and remarked to his colleague next to him how most of the foreign people seemed to think that there is no freedom in China. He said to me that he would defintely want to live in China and that he knew that sometimes the government had to take hard decisions but they were for the good and helped in the development of the country. He wanted to know what lack of freedom I experienced here and I thought of the ban on Blogger among other things. I just told him about freedom of press and information and then he asked me,"Do you want the Olympics in Beijng to run smoothly?" "Of course", said I, even though that question took me by surprise.

We moved on to different topics, mostly about liver cirrhosis, but all of that got me thinking.
One, I love sports and I wouldn't want anything getting in the way of the Olympics.
Two, the people here don't really care about lack of information; the ones who do, know how to get around the system.
Three, you will always judge others using your own standards not theirs. This applies to me and the Chinese.
Four, the Han majority in China view themselves and everyone within official Chinese boundaries as Han. For them, 'Chinese citizen' and 'Han' are synonyms. In other words, what's good for Beijing, is good for China.
Five, sometimes what's okay for me is not okay for you... and what's okay for you is not okay for me... and we just have to accept that.

Tough as a Rhino II

Last semester a doctor told a friend of mine that the Chinese can withstand more pain than the Indians and from what we've seen, that wasn't his national pride doing the talking.
The Chinese really can take more than others. This also translates into more hard-work. Just looking at the students and the workmen on their shifts gives you an idea of how much they can push themselves.
History tells us all that they have gone through the last 50 years but they still keep going. It's the little things you notice... my friend was telling me the other day how the chinese don't care if someone cuts across them when they are walking, they don't even notice the offender. Their ability to brush aside 'irritables' is amazing. Maybe that's why they don't care if they are hit by a car.

Directly Indirect

Before I came to China, I used to think that people in this part of the world are never direct in their conversation. The idea that people from Japan and China beat around the bush a lot more than anywhere else on the planet seems to be universal. But this never prepared me for what I would encounter here.

The Chinese are quite direct in some situations - "Oh no!! What happened?? Why did you cut your hair like this??", accompanied by a small scream and a look of complete shock.

But in other cases they are quite indirect. For example, they use "cool" when they mean weird. "I saw a boy yesterday... his hair is... very cool."
"Oh you mean the guy whose hair looks like he hasn't washed it in ages?"
"Yes, yes, him!"

They also use "strong" when they mean fat. In fact, I was actually advised by a friend that calling a girl strong would not be taken as a compliment. What else am I supposed to call a girl who beats everyone at tennis with her strong smashes?
"Clever"
"oh... okay..."
"Clever" or "wonderful" (apparently they are synonyms in China) is supposed to be a good compliment for almost any occasion. And compliments are free.
"Oh you are wearing so few clothes in winter. You're so wonderful!" umm...thanks. I didn't feel the need to wear my sweater to come down and buy this loaf of bread, just thought the jacket would suffice.
"You really stay up after 12 and sleep whenever you like? How wonderful! Your life is so special! You are so clever!"

Having said that, even after being here for more that 3 1/2 years, I still make mistakes. Learning is a continuos process.
S : (jovial) Hey man! How was your vacation? Looks like you had a good time back home with your family. You've put on some weight too.
R : (not smiling) Another way to say it would be - you look more strong.
S : Oh... umm... okay...

Follow the Leader

In India, no one wants to be the class leader/monitor in high school. They have to work hard, cope with insubordination from everyone and have to take the blame from the teachers if anything goes wrong.

Not so in China. Perhaps it is something instilled into every child's mind in accordance with the Communist principle or perhaps it's just the way things are, but leaders are to be obeyed. And obedience here means not questioning their decisions. If your leader tells you that you have to get up at 6 am every morning and have fun doing excercises, you will have fun. If your leader tells you that you have a major test tomorrow, you don't express shock over the short notice... you just rush to the library and bury your head in your books.

Being a leader has more than it's share of perks. Other than the unquestioned authority you have over your minions, you get to talk with other leaders. Even introducing yourself as the leader of a group of five students will win you much respect and admiration from young and old alike. But the hazards are great too. If anything goes wrong they'll have your head on a platter. According to some recent news reports, if you are in a big enough position, this is a quite literal possibility. Leaders make excellent scapegoats.

Nevertheless, these leaders are everywhere; and everything has a leader. Even in our humble settings, we are constantly made aware of this fact.
There are a couple of "leaders" stationed on the ground floor of our dormitories to help us. If there is any trouble, we have a long talk with them at the end of which they say, "We'll talk to our leaders." And we say, "Oh... so you can't do anything about it? Then why can't we just directly talk to your leaders and get something done without wasting our time?"
This is probably a very un-Chinese thing to do. There are four or five levels of leaders you have to get through to, before anything gets done and each level is only supposed to speak to the level right above it.
But after all that has happened here in our university, things are changing. But there is nothing called gradual change here. I guess there is nothing gradual in any of the changes in China. Every change feels massive and radical. Perhaps that's why they need people to obey the leaders... to minimise the confusion.

Chinese Concern

The Chinese are strange. Yes, I know that everyone is not the same and a person who is not from your hometown always appears to be strange with strange culture, language and customs. But the Chinese are strange.

During early winter, when the weather is cool, we enjoy walking around in our jeans, t-shirts and sandals while the Chinese are all sweating under their double layer jackets. Realising that since it is their country and that they might have different customs, we try not to tell them that all those clothes are not essential for survival. But when they start staring at our sandals and slippers it does seem strange. It is even more so when people tell you that you must wear more clothes and definitely give up those flip-flops. It is at those moments that you are supposed to feel grateful for the thought and concern the Chinese have for their fellows and outsiders.

But there are other times when the Chinese don't seem very concerned about anything.

This happened last semester, when I was waiting for my bus back to the university from the hospital where I study.
The bus stop is on the road running behind the hospital and it gives me a good view of the back entrance to the Central Hospital of Yichang city. This road is never really busy and I had been waiting for a while by a roadside shop, sheltered from the slight drizzle. And then it happened. On the other side of the road, a motorist on his not-so-cool motorbike came off a by-lane and a car rammed into him.
The little guy fell off his machine and his little yellow Chinese helmet, the kind which cannot do anything to protect anybodys head, flew off to the middle of the road. The driver of the car, after a quick glance at the fallen bike, drove off carefully so as not to run over the motorist or his little helmet. A couple of people passing by, saw that the motorist wasn't really injured and just walked on. By this time, I was already on his side of the road and had retrieved his helmet so that the other vehicles didn't crush it as they went on their way. Our motorist was trying to untwist the handlebars of his bike and was surveying the damage, which was minimal - just a broken rear-view mirror and a missing indicator light, plus the stuff that had fallen off the back of his bike.
Picture this - It is raining and I'm standing in the middle of the road with a yellow helmet in my hand. The motorist who is limping slightly is in a hurry to start his bike. One Chinese guy is standing aside trying to see if any damage was done. People and vehicles are going by on their way. As I hand him his helmet he gives me a look that says - What a strange person, I could have done it myself.
And I walked back to the bus stop with my unopened umbrella in hand.

Tough as a Rhino's hide

The Chinese are different.

Well, as everyone knows, everyone is different. And I thought that for someone who has never been to China, knowing what's different about them would be an interesting read.

So I'll start at the very outside... the skin. This appealed to my medical curiosity and perhaps you wouldn't care to continue reading. But to me, this is one of the most important differences.

A friend once told me that holding a Chinese girl's hand is different from holding an Indian girl's hand because the Indian hand is much softer. And I believe him because he has experience. And I've also seen in the hospital that Chinese skin is pretty hard.
They also lack the kind of hair that covers our body. Both sides seem to agree on this because I once read that the common name for foreigners in the North-East of China can be translated as "the hairy one".
The Chinese seem to sweat a lot less than normal too but this is probably a subjective observation because being from a tropical place, I start sweating as soon as I see the sun.
The way the Chinese wash their faces too indicates that there is something different there. They usually just go about clawing their faces and rubbing it with face towels.
But this type of skin does seem to suit their heavy use of makeup. The use of so much paint makes them look like dolls... or old women trying too hard.

Breakfast in China

A lot of Indians, and millions around the world, seem to love Chinese cuisine. No doubt it is a very rich and varied one, but in some cases it falls short of expectations. And one huge area is the breakfast.

This time when I was on the Yichang-Beijing train, I bought breakfast for 10 yuan.
As I was sitting in my cabin, I heard shouts of "baozi" [baked flour balls with meat stuffing]. I like those and as I was pretty hungry I ventured out to buy them. It so turned out that I had to buy a "set" breakfast. I got a bowl of porridge/gruel/(soup?) with the plastic box containing the main course and a pair of chopsticks which the lady handed to me with a "bon appetit" expression on her face.
The soup-thingy tasted like water does when you have drunk too much of it. But I knew it was full of calories and other such important items and so I decided I should try to drink as much of it as possible. The plastic box contained assorted flour balls; one of which I identified as being a boazi and quickly gobbled up. I prodded the other three with my chopsticks and spent some time pondering over the delicate curves and smooth texture of the food. I did take a bite, but the half baked flour didn't feel too appetising.

After taking another sip of the oats+rice+water+/-? drink I moved the rest of the breakfast with quiet dignity into the waiting dustbin.

Handsome Me

Every foreigner who has lived in China long enough has certainly been called handsome/beautiful at least once. When I first came here I was astounded by the number of Chinese people who were impressed by my good looks. But I soon realised that the phrase "You are handsome" is used too freuently in China. It is the polite thing to do. Just like it is polite to say, "You are so strong" [yea, they've told me that too...]
But it came as a pleasant surprise to me when I was at the dentist's one day and this young lady went up to the doc and told him that I looked handsome. She assumed that I didn't understand any chinese at all and so I was sure she was sincere, not just being polite. All my narcissistic feelings came rushing in and I actually smiled, or at least tried to, what with one of his wire cutters in my mouth. She then went on to explain how my eyes and nose were so good looking. I was about to thank her and assume an expression of innocent charm when she blurted out that all Indians looked the same to her. And since they all had big eyes and long noses they all looked beautiful. That brought me down to earth.
"Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder" is so true. For some people here we look beautiful ["your eyes... they seem to have so much depth"] for some, plain ugly ["you are so black!"]

China Diaries - Appointments

This is my fourth year in China and every once in a while I see something unique here. And hence the new category called "China Diaries"


Appointments

The chinese are generally punctual as a rule. In fact, you shouldn't be surprised to find your faithful Chinese friend waiting for you half an hour before the appointed time. But the strange thing is that the Chinese don't seem to have been able to grasp on to the concept of appointments... at least my dentist hasn't. Every time I have to see that guy, which is usually once or twice a month, I have to wait for at least half an hour for him to get around to me. Once, I was left waiting for an hour and a half!
This is what generally happens :
D : Come back next thursday.
S : Okay!
[Thursday 2:30pm, thats when they start work in the afternoon]
D : [with his hands deep in someone's mouth] Deng yixiar (the exact translation of which is "wait a moment")
[After a 'moment' that stretches to 3:30pm] Come sit down. Let me have a look....

If they value time, why waste it?? If they don't, why show up so early??

Bans :/

Its really hard in here behind the Great FireWall of China. They've banned xanga, I can't visit my own blog here, and Wikipedia is out of bounds too. They should probably just block Google and Yahoo too, simply out of spite.
The biggest problem now is that my local friends cannot visit my blog... or vote on my poll... *sigh*

Proxy servers are generally slow... and a lot of them are banned in China anyway [what did you expect?] Unfortunately China's policy of Free Speech doesn't extend to its citizens.

The only good thing right now is that at least I can post in blogger [and get a preview of what my page looks like] For everything else I have to use web proxies... and fortunately I've been able to find a decent working site. Not sure how long it will work though.

Sitting down here among the chinese students who spend a large part of their free time online, I wonder why so many websites are banned. One explanation would be that the 'leaders' want to shield these 'young ones' from international view points. Or is it the other way around... because the 'leaders' don't want the international public to read the chinese viewpoint? Or the 'leaders' want to keep tabs on what the chinese are talking about, which they might be able to do with chinese websites like QQ?
Anyway, we feel bad when popular websites are banned. We say that Free Speech is important. That real freedom comes only when you can choose for yourself who you want to listen to. Does that mean we are against banning of websites? In India some Pakistani websites are banned because they have been deemed 'detrimental to national unity and security'. In Orkut a group/community was banned after almost all Indian orkut users voted against it [by hitting the report abuse link]. Even a court in India got involved. It was an anti-India group with a burning Indian flag as its profile picture. And yes I will say, the banning of the group was justified. And yes I measure it with Indian standards.
Would that mean that when measured by chinese standards, banning of Wikipedia is justified?
"Of course not" might be the first thought in your minds. But then Wikipedia is not exactly accurate. Why? Because everything in it is written by 'normal' people. It works on the principle that people who know will not let lies to be spread [again, sorry for not being able to remember the exact words] But it is quite possible that you might get the wrong information from it... esp. on matters which are not very... 'popular'. So think about it. Is the banning of Wikipedia in China justified?

Whether or not... it remains banned.

And I don't like bans