Monday, August 21, 2017

Uncovering China

It's Monday. Two days ago I was told to stay home yesterday and store some water because some workers were going to come to check the "tubes." And they were going to turn off the water for the day. (So I assume tubes=pipes) Sunday, ah no problem! I don't need no steenking water! Except for cooking, cleaning, doing the dishes, flushing the toilet, laundry, watering plants, brushing my teeth and the air conditioner. Other than THAT...

But at least it wouldn't be so bad if I couldn't have a shower because I haven't found the right church for me as yet over here in China, so I don't do that much on Sundays. I can go a day in my own funk if I have to. And if I absolutely can't live with myself, I can pour some water over my slimy body and lather up. I have enough stored for Armageddon.


That's about 30 litres of water. Plus I have a full pitcher and kettle of drinking water. This is all tap water so not the best to drink. Just to be safe I don't even make ice cubes with it.

So I got up early, because, (of course), I wasn't given a time when the workers would show up, just "the morning." I showered and shaved and did everything that needed water I could think of. Even washed the floors. By 8 o'clock I had a house that was spic and span! And, since it's still hot and muggy here, I was ready for another shower. A few days before, I was sleeping and someone hammered on my door at 10:00 AM. This is when I get my best and deepest sleep. In my experience so far, Chinese knocks are like their voice volumes and the loudness and earliness in the day are directly proportionate. THIS 10 AM knock had 5 AM volume! It startled me out of a deep sleep and I jumped out of bed, fumbled for shorts and shirt and staggered to the door. But I wasn't in time. That day, both my employer and Faith got phone calls from the apartment superintendent so I assume theirs was the 10 AM knock.

But I was ready. Vigilantly avoiding a second shower so as not to miss their call a second time, I just sat at the computer and watched some pre-season NFL, surfed, watched a movie, ate, had an online argument, watched some TV... Incidentally, I WISH I was on The Amazing Race Canada this season! So far the only place they've been that I haven't LIVED was the starting point in Labrador. They went to Vancouver, where I lived for a few years, then Castlegar, where I lived for many years, then Nelson, where I lived for a few years, then Beijing where I lived last year. And they went to places IN these cities where I've been! Zuckerberg's Island, the big, orange bridge in Nelson I lived 100 yards away from, the Canadian Embassy in Beijing where I went several times... What next, Hamilton? Dundas? Jakarta? Maybe little Minokamo, Japan? Calgary? Ignace? Thunder Bay? How about Korea? Anyway, I'd be a ringer this season for SURE!

10 o'clock, no knock. 12 o'clock, so much for them coming in the morning. I waited all day. ALL DAY! Nothing. It seems that most things here change from day to day, even hour to hour, so they don't like to make advanced plans. It's annoying to someone like me, and let's face it, to ANYone, because advanced notice is nice. But it's something I've been told to get used to. When I was called at 7:30 to come to the school and teach an 8 AM class, I mentioned that it was tough to make it on time even though I live so close to the school. Joshua, who was my supervisor at the time, but like everyone else, quit, said, "Get used to it!"

I went to the cable company office to pay my internet/phone bill this morning. It's something I do on Mondays because there's no KBO so I pay the bill, a good 45-minute walk away, and then stroll in the park, another 20 minutes from the cable building. I usually get McDonald's. Today I was just early enough to get an egg Mcmuffin and coffee. The trip is never without its annoyances either. At least half a dozen people on foot, bike, car, truck, it makes no difference cut me off. I mean it's pretty obvious they see me, they know I am going to be in front of them when we meet so they SPEED UP to get in front of me. But they speed up only enough to get the calculated bonus of inconveniencing me and making me slow down or completely stop for them. It's the worst when it's pedestrians. I feel perfectly within my rights to continue walking at my pace, but I know that would cause me to trip the person or at least give them a flat tire. I think, "It would serve them right!" But even as I'm thinking that I always slow down or stop no matter how awkward it is for me.

Then at the cable office. I have been there 7 times not including the time I signed up. Each time I brought my official sign-up sheet with my account number circled on it in three places. I memorized the phrases duo shao qian, (how much money), and jiao fei, (pay bill). 6 times I've showed them previous bills. I pull out my wallet, take out some money, give them my account number, say how much and pay bill and without fail there has been mass confusion every time. Nobody yet has showed me how much I owe and it usually takes me at least 20 minutes to go through the miming and looking up words on my phone Chinese translator and they look up words on their translators and sometimes they want to refer me to the machines but usually don't. Actually today we used the machine, and it looked pretty easy. I thought you needed a card but cash worked fine. I might just try that next time to avoid the requisite panic. I called Faith and she was able to talk the person off the ledge and show him that exactly what he thought I wanted WAS what I wanted.

I got this in Korea a lot. People assume that they just won't be able to understand you because you're not Korean. Even if you make it blatantly obvious, even if you SPEAK Korean, sometimes they still don't understand. Or believe they don't. I think that's what happened to this guy today and maybe the ones before. It reminds me of an old Chinese folk tale. (how's this for foreshadowing?) A man from Cheng wanted to buy new shoes. He carefully measured his feet, then walked to the store. When he got to the shoe store, he realized he had forgotten his measurements. So he went back to get them. Huh? Huh?

But my whole point is it happens, and then I let it go. Unlike Korea. When a person speeds up to cut in front of me at, for example, the E-Mart in Korea, and I politely let that person in front of me, if that person stops directly in front of me so I can't move, begins contemplating some imaginary item on the shelf, because it's the fifty thousandth time this has happened to me in Korea I KNOW the person is just being a fucking douchebag and either I do something about it, or ruin my day WISHING I had done something about it.

Maybe it's because the Chinese haven't cut me off fifty thousand times yet. Maybe it's because I have been either off or on a low stress schedule for a while. Or maybe, in the land of Taoism, I'm starting to do what my life goal is, and what a T-shirt told me to do today. I can't remember the exact wording but I enjoy reading T-shirts here and a girl walking toward me had one on that read, "Change your mind to a new." Only a slight grammar error and tame compared to some you see over here. And, in Korea...


But the message was read loud and clear. So some of this stuff was expected, some wasn't and some is just at a higher or lower degree than anticipated. The biggest culture shock for me has been the number of little kids I see wandering the streets in these crotchless pants.


Now, the kids using the entire city as a toilet was something I got used to seeing in Korea. But the folks there had to pull down pants, underwear, maybe diapers. Here in China it's just squat and blast away. Kid convenience. Maybe they ARE still inventing things in China. Just in case you think I'm alone in my observations or being too harsh...


But I would have to say the best "aha moment" for me so far I stumbled across during this spell of downtime I've had. I've been trying to learn about China and although I have avoided history and politics and things that are heavily biased, I have always enjoyed the great stories from this part of the world. Yarns, myths, folk tales, Confucian anecdotes, Buddhist fables and Taoist allegories, I've read quite a few and even own books of them! I just LOVE that kind of stuff! And I have come to expect a certain wise, conservative, edifying tone to them. I'm sure you've heard a few and know what I mean.



Anybody remember this book? It was one of my favourites when I was a kid. I remember these exact pictures! And when I got to China, some of the boys in Beijing told me that this is a very conservative, sexually temperate country. A few of the guys who, unlike myself, still engaged in the courting of the fairer sex, told me that the ladies all tell them they are old style and traditional girls. Even the mention of any sexual adventurousness or, GASP, mental afflictions like homosexuality were positively shocking! Being gay was illegal until 1997 and was officially considered a mental illness until 2001. This supposed timorous, unenterprising sexual attitude in the Chinese has always seemed a bit odd to me. Hello? 1.4 billion people! I mean you look at India - Kama Sutra. What literature must be hidden in a country as populace as China?

So imagine my not-so-surprise when I dug up the following allegory of karmic retribution: And if you're like me, you can't help but read this in your mind in the voice of Christopher Walken telling the watch story in Pulp Fiction. It's called, "The Farmer and the Pig."

Ahheeemmm!!! Once there was a farmer in the Yangtze River region of China who maintained a relationship with his castrated pig. But one day he sold the pig to a butcher. After the pig was slaughtered its soul could not rest. After much mental anguish and suffering, the pig's soul traveled deep down into the bowels of the earth for an audience with the Emperor of the Nether World. There he met with the Emperor and said, "I cannot bellyache about being butchered for I was destined to reincarnate into a pig. But since my master had affection with me, he should not have sent me to the butcher for money."

After some deliberation, the Emperor decided that the pig was right and allowed it to take revenge on the farmer. That very night, the pig entered the farmer's bed chamber and bit him on his ass while he dreamt. When the farmer awoke, he felt an horrendous itching as though 100 mosquitoes had performed their proboscian penetration simultaneously around the ring of his ass hole. He scratched and scrubbed but to no avail. Somehow he knew that the relief he sought could be found solely through sodomization. Indeed, for many years that was the only cure for the incessant tickle in his anus. But as the farmer grew older, he found it difficult to attract men to perform this service for him. And so, he had to resort to bamboo stakes for relief. One day, the old farmer got drunk and the prickling sphincter returned. He happened to be near that same butcher's shop where he had sold his castrated pig. He hopped into the butcher shop half crazed with rectal irritation. He saw a knife that was used for butchering pigs and in desperation used it in an attempt to stop the infernal itching. Alas, he accidentally pierced himself and bled to death.
 
Now go to sleep little ones. Sweet dreams. Ha ha ha! I admit, I augmented the tale to make it roll off the tongue, but only through word choice. I have added nothing to, nor taken anything away from the plot. It's interesting that in a culture in which homosexuality is roundly hidden, (only 3% male and 6% female describe themselves as completely out), there is plenty of homosexuality in the old tales. Many animal fairies in Chinese mythology enjoy homosexual relationships with young men or boys. Dragons, as in "Old Farmer and a Dragon," prefer more seasoned sodomites. Interestingly, I thought, the stories usually include a thunder storm while dragons captured old men for sex. Dragons were connected to rain storms and were symbolized by, you guessed it, the rainbow.

There was even a temple in the south of China called "Double Flowers Temple" where a deceased gay couple were worshipped by the general public. But like so many, it was destroyed by the Japanese in WWII.

There have been books written by eunuchs who were the only man, well, "men" allowed into the Forbidden City and imperial palaces of Chinese emperors. They all had many concubines in their harems and were not shy about having sex. Even today polygamy is practiced in China, though it is not legal. Mostly rich businessmen have the "privilege."

Did I ever tell you how much I love the Taoists? For centuries they have had their own Kama Sutra which they call "Pillow Books." They are stories and descriptions on sexual positions and techniques that "maximize life energies." I read "The Good Earth" by Pearl S. Buck and loved it. Although she was not Chinese, she captured that mythological tone of the stories that I love. But it was far from sexy. She describes the book, "The Golden Lotus" as China's greatest novel of physical love.

If you think this is pretty male dominated, it is, but fear not, ladies, there's a book about the life of China's only real ruling Empress, Wu Zetian, called "The Fountainhead of Chinese Erotica: The Lord of Perfect Satisfaction." I'm ordering that one online RIGHT NOW! It's famous for being China's first novel to depict sexuality in a very graphic manner. So I guess she had concubines too. Is there a word for a male concubine? YES, there is!

There was also a guy named Li Yu who I hear wrote some of the more humourous erotic novels and short stories in the 1600's. His work was banned in one dynasty or other, so you know it was good. I'm gonna have to find some of that stuff. I think I'll start with "The Twelve Towers." It's twelve stories with one common phallic theme: a "tower." I think I know what I'll get.

So now you know what I'll be reading for the next few months to a year. Not that I'll be able to employ anything I learn practically. But it's fascinating to me how sexually rich cultures, like China's, are covered up in shame. I'll be, if you will, peeking under those covers for a while. I think it'll be fun. Join me!

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