Snapshots

I took more pictures on this trip than I have on any other trip, ever. Still, there were many things that I wanted to capture with a camera but couldn’t. Sometimes my photography skills just weren’t up to the job. Sometimes a particular moment happened so quickly it was impossible to have the camera ready. Sometimes it just felt disrespectful to photograph people as though they themselves were tourist attractions (although many Chinese people didn’t feel that compunction towards us waiguoren). Sometimes what I wanted to capture was less a particular scene than a more general impression.

I’m afraid my skill with words is not much better than my skill with a camera; nonetheless, here you are—snapshots of China in words:

The bottle collectors

There’s a Chinese expression, “chi ku,” which means “eating bitterness.” It’s used to describe any kind of miserable situation, but in some contexts it can be used with a kind of admiration for those who can “eat bitterness” and persevere. One picture that I would have liked to have captured, to my mind, epitomizes this expression. The picture is a woman, or maybe an older man, with stringy hair and a sun-tanned face, wrapped in ragged clothes that, like the person that inhabits them, haven’t been washed in awhile. The person has a big, gray, woven plastic bag slung over her shoulder, and is digging through the trash can outside the department store with a stick. There are people in Shanghai who earn money by collecting plastic bottles, digging through trash cans or dumpsters to find them. Nasty work, as you can likely imagine. They earn 1 yuan (about $0.12) for every 10 plastic bottles they turn in. This picture would capture the drudgery, the resignation to such lowly work. The determination to find enough bottles so that his or her family can eat this week. “Chi ku.”

High heels

Women in high heeled shoes seem to be ubiquitous in China. One of my Chinese friends tells me it’s because so many Chinese women are short. I suppose, things being relative and all, that high heels aren’t so bad for a culture that used to espouse foot-binding, but still… Many Chinese women wear high heels all the time—not just when they’re dressed up, but even when they’re wearing jeans and t-shirts. Now, I can understand why a shorter woman might want to wear heels to look nice when she was dressed up (except that if everyone is short and no one wore heels, everyone would be a similar height and no one would be uncomfortable…), but these women carry the heel-wearing to extremes. For example, Daniel and I hiked two butt-blaster mountains while we were in China (and walked up a couple more that weren’t quite as steep), and in both places there were women climbing those stairs in heels. And not sturdy heels either, but the stiletto kind with beads and bows. Ouch.

Urumqi head scarves (while I’m on the subject of women’s fashion)

One of the distinctive features of Urumqi is its sampling of different ethnicities and religious practices. I really enjoyed seeing all of the different headscarves that many of the women here wore. Some wore the full-length, cover everything, only dark eyes showing out from underneath, type robes. Others just tied sheer scarves--often silk interwoven with gold or silver thread in intricate patterns--so that the scarf covered most of the top of their heads and was tied at the back of their neck.

An NBA fan

The area where Daniel and I stayed in Chengdu was really close to a Tibetan neighborhood. One night, we went wandering through this area and chose a little Tibetan restaurant for dinner. The food was just alright, but it was fascinating to watch the other diners. A table full of shirtless men were eating and chatting and generally making an evening of it. A waitress sat at another table, sipping a coke and watching music videos on the TV hung from the ceiling. A couple of Tibetan monks, dressed in the traditional maroon and gold robes, were sitting by the door where they could enjoy the occasional breeze. We finished eating and got up to leave. As we were almost to the door, one of the monks pointed to Daniel’s feet and said, in English, “Wow! So big!! You can play in the NBA! Play with Shaquille O’Neal!!!”

Bike carts and hand-pulled wagons

I actually tried to take a picture of a couple of bike carts in Shanghai, but the picture didn’t turn out so well. It’s a common sight in every Chinese city I’ve ever visited (except maybe Chongqing, where the porters carry packages hung from poles across their shoulders)—a bike cart or hand-pulled cart, loaded so high that the pedaler or puller disappears when you look from behind. Bottles, wood, vegetables or fruit, old computer parts, furniture, rubbish, people…it seems anything can be loaded on one of these carts. Old men, women, young teens, lots of people use these things to get stuff where it needs to go, lugging it along behind them, struggling either with pedals or rough wooden handles. And the carts seem to always be piled with stuff at least several feet above the cart, tied on with plastic or twine. Another example of “chi ku.” Add “trucks” and “moving vans” to very long list of things we take for granted in the US.

Smiles in Turpan

Turpan, a small-ish city in the northwest province of Xinjiang, is the second lowest spot on earth. The temperatures there, however, must be among the world’s highest. Maybe because it was so hot, life seemed to move at a slower pace in this city. It was fascinating to wander through the neighborhoods and under the grape-vine arbors and around the commercial areas of this city. The best part, however, was that whenever I smiled at someone here, they all smiled back. Real smiles, too—not just fakey polite smiles, or embarrassed who-are-you type smiles. More like a welcome-to-my-town-hope-you-like-it-here smile. It was truly refreshing—maybe even more so than the frozen bottled waters sold by the street vendors.

“Ni hen piaoliang,” or, “You are very pretty”

This can be a very nice phrase or a very irritating one. I guess there’s no really good way to capture this in a photo; arrange a split-screen in your mind, then just try to imagine on one side a shopkeeper trying to convince me to buy whatever she’s selling, at the price she’s asking for it, and on the other hand, an earnest college student shyly giving me a very nice compliment. In some ways, this little phrase encapsulates one aspect of the waiguoren experience—it’s oftentimes very frustrating to stick out so obviously, but it definitely has its good points. I suppose I shouldn’t mind so much being the target of persistent, forceful, or whiny sales efforts. The flip side of the coin is often rewarding interactions with people who are interested in talking with me for the sole reason that I’m a waiguoren. And of course, it’s always a boost to the ego when I get emails that contain lines such as: “sometimes I really miss the glamour of being with a foreign beauty.” Heh. These kids must not have cable.

Long pinkie fingernails

This was something I thought very strange on my first visit to China. Many men in China (in places that I visited, at least) will let the fingernail on their pinkie finger grow really long. I think it’s supposed to show their status—that they don’t have to do manual labor for a living. And it’s practical of course—useful for digging in various bodily orifices. It’s a small picture of the ironies that so much characterize present-day China—a symbol of development that itself might seem like a mark of backwardness in an already-developed nation. Part of the transition stage, maybe. It’s a fascinating time to be studying China.