Nice or Stupid?

It's a long weekend of sorts here in the people's republic. It's a holiday called Qing Ming Jie during which the people tidy up ancestor's tombs and celebrate the dead. I hear that there also used to be a festival called Han Shi that coincided with Qing Ming, during which the people ate only cold food. I was out walking amongst the people of the people's republic today. It was a beautiful day. Sunny, not too smoggy, and warm enough to scare the locals with my white legs. I wore shorts outside the house for the first time today. I got some looks! One girl on a bicycle was so astonished that she almost rode her bike into a tree. I mean staring at my legs and pedalling by so that she was looking almost completely backwards. She was lucky her Mother was walking beside her and stopped her before she wiped out. Oddly, because of months of sock and pant wearing, my legs are largely hairless more than half way up the calves. Perhaps reminiscent of the plucked chicken skin on some of the food offerings at graves on this day. I guess friction has worn the hair away. A couple weeks of sandals and shorts'll take care of THAT sitch.

I didn't notice people eating any more or any less cold food today. Eating habits appeared as normal. But I DID see the paper flower and fake money offerings being sold all over the place. I just love the paper money! Just across the street from the cyclist I scarred for life, there was a small booth selling bills all the way up to a 100,000,000,000. A one hundred billion bill. I noticed no currency denoted on these bills. I suppose it's unclear what the currency is used in the afterlife. Look at the very first pic in this explanatory webpage. "Hell bank?" Is this just a(n) hilarious translation or is this an offering to some ancestors who weren't particularly nice? Maybe it's a sort of, "Thank you for being a bad person and leaving me a nicer house?" Or is the afterlife considered hell? I'll have to ask. Maybe it's a nicer hell than life was, so long as the living continue honouring you with sacrifices. Not sure.

I say the air was fairly good because the AQI, (air quality index), was 77 when I ventured out on my walk in the early afternoon. That's yellow. Not too bad, but not green, which is clean. However, tonight it's up to 109. That's orange and is described as dangerous for sensitive breathers. Take a look at the SECOND pic on that website I linked to this post. That's likely why. Over 1000 tonnes of paper products a year are burnt during this holiday. They're cracking down though because of fake money burning that has led to forest fires. It's funny the things a man recollects. I very seldom think of my Chinese girlfriend from my days when I lived in Hongcouver, but today I remembered her and her aunt going to a place in Vancouver where they burnt fake money. I never would have remembered that otherwise. What was her name? I wanna say Sophie or Sophia but it could just as easily have been Stacy or Selma. She wasn't burning any fake money to honour ME I'll tell you that. Just spending my REAL money. Meanwhile she worked three jobs and saved presumably so that someday somebody will be burning some fake money in her honour. I guess that's one of the horses on this old Chinese merry-go-round.

I actually saw a merry-go-round today outside the little shopping mall I walked to. Both were miniature versions of the real things they might have in Beijing, but I prefer the reality of the smaller city. I went off the main streets a little today and saw some of that reality. Narrow, bustling streets that looked as if they were dug up and patched by the locals, not the city so required that my concentration remain on the terrain and the motorists and cyclists and not so much on the earthy, Chinesiness all around me. Loitering. Lots of loitering. Some good smells of HOT food cooking and some bad smells of liquids being carried out of shops and sloshed down the sewer holes. And everything from the asphalt to the neon and non-neon signs to the vending tables seemed coated in a thin, grey film of pollution and cooking oil. I was looking for seeds, soil and pots so that I could do my part for Qing Ming. This is the time of year when farmers traditionally sow seeds as well. I saw no flower and bird shops, (Interestingly, this is the combination in the shops that sell seeds and pots and soil. They also sell birds, whatever the connection may or may not be...), but I did see quite a few other things. MANY fruit vendors that had bananas, strawberries, pineapples, apples, oranges and other fruits that were so obviously bought off the same trucks that I only really needed to look at one. Some of the fruit vendors had these tiny, pointy nectarines too. I was tempted to buy a few, but they were too hard. I saw variety stores everywhere; some slightly larger markets; barber shops; clothing stores; one tattoo shop that I looked in and saw someone getting a haircut; some coffee shops that, and I could be wrong here but judging by some of the young and sexier than normal pedestrians I saw, could have been comparable to the Korean "coffee" shops where you actually drink with young, available ladies. None of them were open yet. The girls I saw were probably just waking up and going out for breakfast at 2 or 3 in the afternoon. I saw a guy pulling orange video gambling machines out of a literal hole in the ground ostensibly to be used later in the evening and put back at sun-up. I saw a few tiny restaurants with big pots of soup or rice on the boil outside and hopeful, mangy dogs and cats lurking nearby. I nodded hello to one young man who was just standing around with a few other young, what shall I say, uh, industrious, shinily dressed, overcalogned, but enterprising looking fellows and he grinned and gave a barely audible ni hao. I saw a filthy, matted cat on a two-foot chain meowing in complaint. I saw kids chasing kids. Two or three 8-year-old boys crowding around a small, weathered video game didn't notice the passing wei guo ren. That means "foreign person." I don't hear that even close to as often as I heard "waygook saram" in Korea! And, although I still expect it, when I am approached by groups of teens, they DON'T say hello in English and laugh their asses off when I say hello back. I've been greeted by some kids, mostly in my school, and when I said hello in reply, there was no laughing! Perhaps the Chinese have not yet tapped into this ENDLESS fountain of Korean enjoyment.

I saw many of the same shops I see everywhere including in my own neighbourhood like video game places, hardware stores, dumpling, dimsum, noodle and rice shops, a couple mobile vendors of fruit, music, Chinese pancakes and wraps, and a whole lot of restaurants serving the same, more genuine, but less delicious Chinese food than they have in Canada. Other than the tattoo parlour and the possible girly bars, I just saw lots and lots of the same stuff that I don't want. Much like the fruit vendors, almost every shop has the same selection of the same stuff off the same trucks. But it was nice to see a new neighbourhood. Different vibe and different people. There were also four very nice, old and over the many years, badly pruned willow trees. I took some pictures of these beauties of nature overhanging the unnatural capitalistic hawking and haggling on this unseasonably hot afternoon, but I took them with my poop cam and that is incompatible with this computer so I can't share them.

When I reached the shopping area where two of my students, Krystal and Tiffany, told me I would be able to find what I was looking for, I had been walking for over an hour. The respite from the warm sun was welcome. Inside the dimly lit building were probably a hundred little privately rented areas where people had about 10 different kinds of shops. Not the first one of these I'd been to. Seriously narcoleptic patrons of shops were too tired to give me their hard sells. I took great pains to avoid eye contact and make their choices to remain in zombieville seem warranted. They weren't all totally idle, however. A few were talking with shop owners nearby, often with the identical products in their basically identical stores. Most who were not full on vegetative were lost in cellphones, which isn't much more alert. So it was fairly non-confrontational shopping. To me, that's a very good thing. I have a few rules when it comes to shopping in Asia. I detest shopping for all things except sports memorabilia and groceries. But since Asia has none of the former stores and so very few of the latter that are good, suffice to say, I detest shopping in Asia. Rules have made the experience a bit more, but not much more, bearable. Rule number one: if the store is playing loud dance music, local pop or even English pop songs, nothing good can be bought and no good price can be found at that establishment. Move on. I HAVE to give a beautiful example from today before we get to rule number two. I was walking down the long street that was almost all sports clothing and running shoes. Much like Korea, China has areas where they sell mostly one thing. Shoe areas, glasses areas, musical instrument areas, etc. So this particular shoe store had two athletically clad, high school to university aged girls either saving for university or paying for it with a job in which they pull down a couple bucks a day more than likely. They had to stand outside the shop and coax people inside. Inside where the song was playing, "Yo, yo, any you mothafuckas wanna rock?!?!" I smiled and almost accidentally encouraged one of the girls to approach me but I looked to the other side of the street.

Which brings us to the rule you've probably guessed by now: number two: don't make eye contact. That just encourages the hard sell. This goes with rule number three: If they try the hard sell, they've lost the sale. Even if I actually WANT what they're flogging. I don't want to encourage that harassment. Rule number four: Don't ask for help. Generally, whether you speak the lingo or not, the people in stores hovering over you as you browse are not there to help and CAN'T help. They know roughly as much about the store as you do. And if it's a store you frequent, less than you do. They're watching to see if you steal. And they're getting paid miniscule salaries, even in the richer countries in Asia, so don't expect expertise. Quite honestly, especially if you don't speak the language, the LAST thing they want to do is communicate with you and help you. And with their salaries, it's nicer of us to leave them the hell alone. Rule number five: No prices - no business. The shops that don't put prices on products WILL rip you off. Most countries over here have fairly standard rates for different races. There's the local price, the not local but same country price, the foreign white guy price, the foreign Japanese/Korean price and probably some others. If they put the prices on things, they can't discriminate. Some say they do this because it leaves the option of haggling open. This brings us to rule number six: I don't haggle. Okay, okay, I know it's our responsibility to do so in order to curb the cheating of our fellow foreigners, but rule number 5 discounts this. This is why I'm not generally excited when someone invites me to a market of some kind. Markets = haggling. I HAVE on occasion been known to outsource the haggling to a female Asian. Take your pick, whatever country in Asia, they're TIED for the best hagglers in the world. If you have a big purchase to make and you want to save some dough and aren't too worried about saving time, an Asian woman will save you money. It's a fact.

So employing these rules, I browsed the mini mall. It didn't take long because as I said there were 10 shops. Snacks where there were supermarket bulk bins full of nuts and sweets. Probably 10 of these with identical nuts and sweets. Toy stores where they had the identical cheap crap as the other stores. Stationary, houseware, salons, electronic knickknacks, cleaning supplies, bathroom and two floors of clothing. I avoided those floors. The first floor, every shop had the same items as every shop that sold the same stuff. I really didn't need to spend as much time there as I did, but because there were only the 10 different shops, it was very easy to get lost and I did. Luckily there were three shops that sold mostly fake flowers but some pots and seed. No birds though. I got some pots and seeds and then exited the mall. Of course the minute I stepped outside I sneezed. It was still bright and sunny out. I walked home down a few new roads. I went to about 10 or 15 stores in a printer neighbourhood I stumbled across including two shops that were Canon printer stores, but none could find me a black PG-945 ink cartridge for my printer. A few of them phoned other stores as well. They have what they have. LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS of what they have but no variety. I'll have to get it online. This is why Jack Ma is a gozillionaire! He's the guy who owns Ali Baba. The online megastore. I think he's bigger than Wallmart now. Jack Ma is no genius, lemme tell you. Well, he might be, but his business plan isn't. You give people what they want, not force them to want what you give, and guess what, you get rich! Especially if there are 1.4 billion of them.

So anyway, back to the top when I said that this is "somewhat" of a holiday for China. Believe it or not, it's pretty common in China to have these holidays during the week but do make-up work on the weekends. Almost everybody worked Saturday to make up for the holiday. All the kids went to school on Saturday. So it's really NOT a holiday. Here's how that complicated MY life: I teach one or two hours on Saturdays. Zoe, the Chinese teacher I work with, originally said that she would teach 2 hours and I'd teach one but it has never been that way. I've been teaching two hours every Saturday and she's been teaching one. This past Saturday was cancelled and the one before I was in Korea so my students hadn't seen me for two weeks. Zoe tells me that two of the kids quit and I only have one student now. Then Zoe tells me that because our student goes to classes on Saturday, I'll have to teach her on Sunday. Well I've already been told that I'll be doing make-up classes on Saturday so now I'm only getting a 2-day weekend out of the long weekend. Pretty much like everybody in China. Oh well, no biggie. So Zoe says I'll teach in the afternoon. Then she asks if that's okay and I say I'd prefer the morning because it makes it seem like the weekend is longer. So she says fine and then we talk about what to teach but never really land on anything. So I go in in Sunday morning not knowing what I'm teaching exactly. Then when I get there, Zoe tells me I'll be teaching all three hours because she has to go to church. Then Zoe becomes like one of those university girls getting 3 bucks a day hauling people in off the street: I can't make eye contact with her. I KNOW she knew about church on Sunday when she was telling me about the schedule change on Friday. This is probably why she originally said we'd be teaching in the afternoon. But I think, well, she DID the full three hours when I was in Korea and it's probably not worth complaining. On the bright side, I was never officially told but it turned out that the kids studied on Saturday what they would have been studying on Monday. Since Mondays are days off for me, I didn't have to go in on Saturday. So I still got a three-day weekend anyway, if not consecutive.

The thing I wanted to blog about today before I got sidetracked on the shopping adventure and tips, was just this. It happens an awful lot to me. Because I'm a nice guy. And all you nice people know what I'm talking about. I guess I shouldn't be surprised since you could just scroll back to many other entries in this blog and find on several occasions where I've commented that to a Chinese person, nice equals stupid. I feel like I'm paying all the bills here so far because the school knows I'm nice. I feel like Zoe made that move because I'm nice. I think that maybe this whole Saturday class, for which I make zero extra salary, could just be a private class I've been thrown into to fill out my sched and make someone else more money. But in keeping with my new philosophy, at least I'm still employed. It could be worse.

That said, I've been thinking a lot this week about why we're put on this earth. All the students I get instantly see that I'm a nice guy and they're faced with a decision: do I still respect him and do what he tells me to do or do I take advantage of his kindness and goof off? The problem as I see it, and this goes back to the ancestors living in hell, is that making your life successful by the standards of an increasingly acquisitive world, requires taking advantage of the kindness of good people. So many people sacrifice their principles to screw nice people in order to make money. And it's not only an undiagnosed mental illness, it's encouraged! Being an asshole is not natural, it's not good and it's not honourable. If you make your way in the world by being an asshole to nice people, I kinda hope you get to spend the afterlife in hell and that no matter how much money your descendants burn, they're only doing it because you left them money or stuff, they didn't love you, they never loved you, because you were an asshole! I hope that just makes your hell a little bit worse, you dicks!

When you really give it a think, you will find all kinds of situations in our lifetimes in which we have this same choice and if you ask me, these are the situations that measure the worth of a human being. All your friends are bullying the new kid and he's too nice to fight back. The substitute teacher is nice and he/she can't control the students. The cashier in training gave you too much change. Some jerk pushes his/her way to the front of the line. People are constantly faced with chances to take advantage of nice friends, family, mates, authority figures, all kinds of people. And people are constantly faced with chances to do something about OTHERS who are taking advantage of kind people. All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

Even animals! It's been said that the way you treat helpless animals says a lot about how you treat people. Or the way you treat people who can do nothing for you, like homeless or poor. There are no grey areas either. No tough decisions. We all know when we are faced with these tests and we all know the right and wrong decisions to make. Nowadays we are much better at justifying the wrong decisions but I think only the truly psychologically damaged can't tell the right from wrong. This is not to say these decisions haven't been a part of life for time immemorial, however. Way back in Biblical times there were decisions like this and people taking advantage of the goodness of their fellow man. There were people who made good livings at it. And even Jesus didn't like them. What? That's not right? Jesus loved everyone, you say? Well, when he was telling us to love everyone, including our enemies, he expanded on that by saying that it won't do much good to love the good people, even publicans can do that! Even a lowly, scumbag piece of human garbage like a publican can love someone who loves him.

Let's get some perspective on this. What exactly was a publican? And why did Jesus, even Jesus, think they were all lower than snakes bellies in wagon ruts? Back in the old Roman times, the collection of taxes was the basest of all livelihoods. They were appointed by the "equites," the richest class of Romans, so extortion, overcharging, and outright fraud went all but unpunished. Since it made the rich even richer, they were all actually encouraged. And who are the people who can do such a loathsome job? People who care not a fig about their public perception. People who aren't out to make friends, just money. People who would rather have people fear them than love them. Psychopaths. Sociopath/psychopath, again, I'm not sure there is a difference and if you've read my blog enough, you'd know my feelings on this: I think a person using the mind to figure out the mind is just creating his/her own personal conundrum. A quandary inside a conundrum wrapped in an enigma. It's intellectual masturbation and far from scientific. The very well accepted "test" for psychopathy, even though it was devised by a Canadian, is a very good example of what I'm talking about. Most of us, through movies, TV, and some of us, books, know enough about sociopathic personalities and even various real life examples, to create as good a test or better. Just look at the test. To me, it's so simplistic, you'd save time by just asking ONE question: "Hey, dude, are you a psycho?"

But, this, believe it or not, is what we have. It's the best tool we have for spotting the psychopath. Yet, within the test itself lie its weaknesses. If a person is manipulative, charming, a liar, intelligent and versatile, he or she could easily see through this test and reverse it so now he/she is in the head of the shrink who's administering it. Look at my earlier post with the vid of Bundy being questioned by Dr. Dobson and see who you think is testing who.

So why bring this up? It's just because of what I see in our world. The number of suspected psychopaths is presumably 1 in 100. With this Hare test as our gauge, I'd suspect higher numbers, since most psychopaths should be intelligent enough to sidestep detection with so obvious a test. But even if the numbers were as high as 2 or 3 in 100, I agree with the thinking that they are the vast minority. Most people have normal emotions and empathy. Most people are NICE.

So why are so many psychopaths in positions of power like CEO's of large corporations or politics? Why are the minority of assholes running this gong show we have on Earth? BECAUSE we're nice and they are just taking advantage of us.


Psychopaths do bad things and some of the nice people go along with them because it's easier to be a dick than to stand up for what's right. Psychopaths lead and nice people follow, making it appear that there are more amoral jerks out there than there really are.

Nice people need to protest! We need to fight back. We need to kick some sociopathic ass! But we're too nice.

At least that's the way I see it.