XIEZI?!?

today was our first, and only, shopping day of any significance.

ok i have to stop. i'm sitting in the commons of the hostel, and this hysterically bad song is playing- it's a mash-up of "every breath you take", an 80s pop song, with altered lyrics to make it more palatable to the youth, and "I'll fly away", as used in O Brother, Where Art Thou, put to a bad R&B break. it makes me sad. the music in the morning here starts out as various traditional chinese classical instruments, by lunchtime modulates to old jazz standards, bollywood stuff, etc, and by night it's just bad american pop. i mean, really bad. I'm in a room labeled the "Traveler's Club" and it says a lot about most of the westerners we've encountered on this trip- mostly overpriced western food, overpriced drinks, trendy decoration with enough of an oriental flare to make it "cool". The same Filipina teacher I talked to in Yangshuo about HK talked about a lot of the people that come to Zhuoyue to teach. There's a stereotype- western backpackers come to this country, where between their native currency and the salary they can get as english teachers (something like 3 times what the average worker makes in these cities) they live like millionaires. most of them go out and get drunk every night because they can afford to- they make friends with other Westerners and a few token natives, probably speaking no Chinese anywhere they go.

it's hard to judge the motives of the western people around us. most of them come across as rich kids playing with their money, though it's not fair to judge without talking to them more. I don't know that we can claim any sort of relative moral high ground- we're also just some kids bumming around in a foreign country because we can afford to, summer jobs or not. i feel awkward every time i meet someone my own age working here, be they a 19 year old boy on the train back to Xi'an after visiting his family hundreds of miles away, or the 17 year old girl who makes her living running an eternally successful shop geared towards ripping off the tourists who flock here and buy kitsch. on our last day in beijing we walked by a woman in front of some massive hotel yelling on a cell phone something like "tell your father we can't get in to the Intercontinental, he should go ahead and change our reservations to the Hyatt". Jorgen and I have stayed in a range of housing types- from the first (and last, i suppose) tiny HK flats to this place, which seems oppulent by comparison- it makes me forget what hotels offer that makes them so much more expensive- we have a private room with two beds, AC, a mirror, a table, a window, and lights- public bathroom and showers, coin laundry facilities, free breakfast between 7 and 9:30. what more is needed? how much more do we have here than many of the people living in this same city, outside of the glittering center?
Jorgen says that one of the differences is that we've made the effort to learn Chinese and familiarized ourselves with the culture, rather than expecting them to cater to us- but how many times have we bemoaned the lack of romanization on a street sign, or depended on first the guidebook and now as we move to more westernized cities, the widespread speaking of broken english, where our own knowledge and studies left us unprepared? True, we've dealt with farmers in rural paddies who spoke only chinese, and been the only white people to show up in the Guangzhou long distance bus station for weeks, maybe months, but there is an eternal question of what can only be called "authenticity"- an ethical and cultural fine line between the Stupid American Tourist who thinks it's cool to be in China and the student and traveler (who also thinks it's cool to be in China). As we've moved East, it becomes harder to practice Chinese when English becomes increasingly widespread and situationally convenient. and moving into a central hub of Asian finance-

my god. the constant barrage of salespeople. you can watch the heads snap up, the projected paths change, as the light hair is spotted. I imagine there are interesting dynamics, almost magnetic, were an aerial view available of our movement through a crowded avenue. Helloyouwantbuybagwatchiphone? once it was determined that the phrase repeated towards us was "Polo, low cost" rather than "Hololocaust", things got easier to ignore. every once in a while we'll run into someone who, upon finding out that we're American, puts it simply- "Oooh, Meiguoren! money money moneyyy." (that or arbitrary references to Bush). during daylight hours it is constant. the same "Hello" that has haunted us through the rest of china here morphs into a variety of memorized phrases as ploys to create conversation, or else a simple statement of products- hello iphone, shoes, bag watch suitcase. My favorite was this one very mellow guy, whom I passed a few times- each occasion warranted a very clear, slow "Sun Glasses", with such an air of "I know you want to buy this" confidence that I invariably burst out laughing. The same thing happened with the guy who waited until the tourist was almost past him to suddenly thrust forward a picture of watches and shout WATCH! with a grin. we were considering fighting back- translating some of the item names back into Chinese and, when offered, hysterically shouting them back at the salesperson:
"Hello shoes t-shirt bag-"
"Xiezi? XIEZI?! T-SHU-SHAN!!!"

Something we've encountered that seems so far uniquely Shanghainese- Bronze statues of people, scattered around popular areas. Of the three groups we've seen thus far, however:
One was a family of 3 europeans staring in touristy awe at the Oriental Pearl Tower
One was a group of 2 europeans and a chinese businessman talking
One was a european woman with a bunch of tourist shopping bags, small child in tow

which would be about the equivalent of erecting statues of Japanese Tourists taking pictures all over the place in the US. it's just awkward.

There is something deeply psychological about being visually distinct in an ethnically homogenous culture. Obviously the two of us will never, ever be mistaken for Chinese (well, except by the one woman who freaked when she sat down next to Jorgen and realized that he was not in fact a Chinese man with dyed hair as she'd assumed from behind). We've met people who make friends with us out of fascination or sympathy, and others who treat us with contempt or as opportunities because of what we appear to be. Perhaps that's why most of the western backpackers interact only with eachother- there's a gap created by each of those dynamics, and it's questionable as to whether or not it can be bridged without real effort on either part. making friends with travelers in the same position is easy, and humans are creatures of habit. but i contend that there can be no real understanding while that gap remains. maybe that's the difference between sides of the aforementioned fine line- how much effort one is willing to put into understanding something new, and seeing themselves through different eyes. Do we pass that test? I'd like to say so, but who wouldn't?