The Count

The search for the Count continues. I am obsessed with having a bowl of Count Chocula cereal before I hop on that plane. It does not have to be served Jennifer Lancaster style--with a healthy spalsh of half and half-- I am content to take it with the icky one percent in my parents' fridge. But so far, the closest I have come is yucky ol' Boo Berry, and that just isn't right for me.

Sigh. You'd think I'd be more worried and upset about returning to the Big C without my child, and in truth, I am, but how many times can you wake up in the middle of the night, heart pounding, freaking out that your baby girl is leaving you to go off to the big big city when she still can't pick her socks up off the floor by herself? (The record for me is eight.) Count Chocula is my harmless vent. If I obsess over this, rather than the fact Lulu lost her ATM card and I will have to clean up the back bedroom to find it, then I feel as if life has been rather more kind to me than it actually has.

Yesterday I saw or spoke to or dined with three old friends: one for lunch, one for dinner, one for a long phone conversation. This is more contact with the past then I have had since I finished high school back in the early, early 80's. Part of me is still dazed, part of me got back little chunks of my soul, things I thought were gone. It's hard to explain: I've been AWAY for so long leading this completely different life, so many years of it without neighbors, people who spoke English, or friends or family who gave a damn about me, that to return from this self-imposed exile into old friendships is like sliding into a warm bath. Anyone who has resumed normal human relationships after being in an abusive relationship will understand this without further explanation.

Old friends are like Horcruxes and if you're lucky, you meet up with them and get that first hug and you do indeed get back that missing chunk of yourself. How wonderful to talk to someone who knew me as a girl, and how wonderful to bring my daughter along and her the comment, "Oh, my, she's lovely, just like you!"

So back to Beijing, but I think this is the last year. During this trip, something just clicked: I want normalcy, I want to go back to having my classroom, and my students, and trips to the library. I spent a month's salary at Borders and even with my discount didn't get half of what I wanted. It's time to stop saving the posts from Powell's and going out and reading what I want, eating what I want, talking to people without using a dictionary or translator, and saying what I think without fear that someone from the Wai Ban will overhear and get all pissy about it. If a bowl of Count Chocula heads my way, that's just the grace note on the final chord.

What to Pack for China

If you're moving to China, and you are going to be in Beijing, there isn't a lot you need to bring. First of all, if you're lucky enough to be going on the company dollar, your housing, kid's tuition, moving expenses etc are going to be covered by the company. Diplomats, service people, Management of large companies--you're sitting with your heinie in tub full o' butter. If you're going to be in a large expat compound or up in the "foreign ghetto" of Shunyi, you may not even realize you have left the States, except that your neighbors will probably be better cooks than the ones you have now. Expat packages can include that all-important 35,000 USD (US Dollar) PER YEAR tuition at your child's international pre-school, food allowances, tax-free salary (for the first 85,000K)cars and drivers and more.

For the rest of us, however, there's a very different story. Yes, you can buy your own ticket and find a job doing something like "playing with kids" at a local kindergarten. The hours are long, the work is semi-illegal (if not totally illegal) but you can pull in enough to survive. If you're teaching English as a university, you will have housing of some sort, and you will have legal working permission. You won't have a big salary, but as long as you give up cheese, you can do quite well. This is a good step for someone who is in early retirement and wants their savings to mature a big. There are limits to how old you can be to get a legal working visa, but your wai ban (foreign affairs office) know the laws and are responsible for your visa anyway. Think twice about accepting a contract for 4,000 RMB per month that stipulates teaching hours plus "office hours" of a total of 40 hours per week--you will get stuck in the office holding impromptu English lessons that someone has arranged for free (and they're pocketing the tuition they charged) and you will also be writing curriculum that you have no business writing--ARE YOU TRAINED IN EFL AND CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT? I DIDN'T THINK SO!--plus you won't get paid for it.

Trust me--no matter what you do, someone along the way is profiting from it. The only exception to this rule is the lovely Mr. Ding--worthy of a thousand posts--whom I will get to later. You won't be lucky enough to meet him, most likely, so just decide how much exploitation you can take and then relax and go with the flow.

What to pack: so, you have two suitcases. Gone are the days when expats loaded up their suitcases with pie pans and vanilla extract (although I did pick up two special bread pans on request for my dog-sitter.) In Beijing, you can get just about everything, eventually. There are some chains like Carrefour (French supermarket chain) that can import a certain small percentage of foreign goods, like their own brand of ready-made pie crusts, cheese, and other items. Yes, you can get Nacho Corn Chips everywhere. You can get Cheetos, but unless you shop at Jenny Lou's and buy imports, they won't be cheeze flavored--they will come in a variety of flavors including Hot Dog. I did once find Chinese-made Cheetos in an airport that advertised on the package as being cheese-flavored but they were the "cheese flavor" that Chinese people think of as cheese. So, in other words, not salty orange-colored powder but a sickly white tasting of powdered milk and sugar. There are 7-11s, which have surprisingly good food, but no Icees. Jenny Lou's is a small chain of stores owned by two different people, sisters no less, and there are bets as to how to pronounce it--Jenny Lou, as in "Skip to my Lou" or Jenny Low, as in "Load." Anyway you say it, they eventually have everything, but not all the time. If there's something you want--say, Black Forest Tim Tams--and they're in, scoop them up. Prices between all the stores fluctuate wildly and in general the cost of everything foreign has doubled. Occasionally politics has an impact on what's available--What? You won't accept our powdered milk enhanced with plastic? Screw you, we're cancelling your import of Dr. Pepper!--but in general, it's all there eventually, if you don't mind Bubble Gum Flavored Candy Canes in time for Easter or chocolate rabbits at Halloween.

There are people who specialize in catering to the foreign crowd, such as Mrs. Lejen Shanen of Mrs. Shanen's Bagels. She has an emphasis on fresh and healthy that alarms me--I like my vices left undisturbed--but you can get killer "artisan" pizza there. (Shop and store in Shunyi county.) She also leases organic land for farming and you can even take your kids out to the farm to pick cotton, IF YOU HAVE A CAR and can get there. If you're like me and don't, you're pretty much screwed. Or you can take a taxi. My driver is very nice--I've employed him for years for the occasional outing--email if you'd like his number. I "rent" him about once a month to go to Jenny Lou's and Ikea and the like-- so much easier doing one big shop than scurrying about town with a lump of cheese wilting in my Coach bag.

You can also get frozen Leander's Bagels and the like at City Shop--if you can afford the prices. (I first need a foot massage to give me the courage to shop there.) And yes, there is Ikea, where you can get your household goods. Ikea delivers, by the way, and they assemble too, very important if, like me, your tiny hands were never meant to hold a hammer. Just take the goods you've paid for to the "Delivery counter" and talk to the nice man there. ALWAYS CARRY YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION, INCLUDING ADDRESS AND PHONE NUMBER, WITH YOU. Much easier to show a piece of paper than to stammer, "Uh, my address, my, uh, dizhi, is uh, a university for money, uh, a Daxue for uh, economics, I mean qian...) There's also Metro,not the subway line but the store in Haidian district. Metro is sacred, as they have big bunches of everything--a mini-Costco--and at very good prices.

Book lovers--there is the Bookworm, the Foreign Language Bookstore (check out the bulk of foreign books, including kids' books, on the third floor) and Amazon, which, bless their hearts, delivers. Sadly, the days of M class mail are gone--you could mail yourself a bunch of books from the US for roughly a buck a pound---but there must be other ways to send. Surface mail? Must find out.

A note: Lands' End has all your cold weather needs, they ship to China, and they are extremely polite about any screw ups. Missing shipment? They replace it, for free, ONCE. They're on line.

Usually, if a package has a value of over 50 bucks it goes to Customs, who will email you if they have an email address or call you if they have your phone number. The person contacting you may or may not speak English. They try to call you,in my experience, ONCE. Too bad if you don't understand the call. Basically, if your package hasn't shown up, ask a Chinese-speaking friend to call Customs. It's usually there. You will have to sign a form in Chinese which is basically an apology note (I'm sorry I imported something instead of buying it locally) and show ID--passport, please--and they will hand it over. There is a time limit on how long they hold the package before "destroying it" as unclaimed. Be nice to the people there--once they know you, they are especially efficient and helpful to deal with. Note the careful wording of "once they know you." Don't go in high-handed and arrogant shouting about your rights. This is not good manners and is not effective in the US or Canada, either.

So, what to bring? If you have wide feet or big feet (for women, anything over a seven) bring shoes and socks. Big ass? Your own long underwear and tights. (Although Lands End has good long underwear.) Boobs? Of any size? Bras, unless you want to track down something at the Russian market to fit. Deodorant. (You can get it now at Jenny Lou's but in limited amounts and limited types.) Note: Watson's Sundries and Drug Store sells deodorants such as Fa but they don't work for most foreigners. Cosmetics: these are REALLY REALLY EXPENSIVE in China--a Wet and Wild lipstick can set you back ten US dollars. Imagine the price of Creme de la Mer (about 300 bucks for a 125 buck jar) or Estee Lauder. You can get everything at Sephora, but the clerks are bitches and they have insisted on typing my name into the system as something ridiculous like czaxen boobsre and refuse to acknowledge that I might know the spelling on my own damn name. Sephora is not the only place where the clerks are bitches--most of them are. Stores are overstaffed with so many sales staff that it's sometimes impossible to get into the aisle to pick up the item you want. There will be, however, a shortage of clerks to ring up your purchases. (Watsons, I'm looking at you!)

Prescription medicine is ridiculously cheap there--the heart pills my Dad takes run 20 bucks a month there as opposed to about 600 here--and they're THE SAME BRAND, SAME MANUFACTURER, SAME PLACE OF ORIGIN. (Michael Moore, darlin', get your heinie to China.) Be prepared for this: in many big shops, such as Carrefour, you might show the clerk what you want to buy--she'll write a ticket for it--you take it to a cashier and pay for it--then come back to the clerk, show your three receipts, and finally get the item--then move on to the next aisle. Thus shopping can take ages. In smaller shops, you will be shadowed by a clerk who frantically grabs products out of your hands, throws them into a basket s/he insists on carrying, and you STILL have to take those receipts to the cashier--pay--then hand over a copy of the receipt number two to the clerk before receiving your goods. This is being phased out slowly, but it's still there, even in Beijing.

Expect this: personal comments from fellow shoppers, cashiers, and sales staff of the most lurid nature, namely comments on the quality and quantity of what you're buying--on the size of your ass--on the outfit you're wearing--on what your salary might be--your hair color and texture--the person you're shopping with--the nature and quality of that relationship... Twenty years ago these comments ranged from wondering/fawning/slightly hostile/curious but now they are mostly scornful. It's a trade-off: my blue eyes no longer make small children cry, but they no longer crowd around me hopefully shouting, "Hello, what is your name?"

This is Beijing-centric, and I know that. Major cities have major markets--Hypermarkets, they're called, but if you're in the sticks, baby, you are on your own. While I travel frequently to smaller cities I'm not there long enough to shop.

Hope in a Jar and and a Song in My Heart

I don't mind being older, because the older I get, the more I know, and the less I worry. I do, however, miss my jawline, which has been obscured by a double chin for a few years and now even that's starting to droop. My mother kindly offered me a small face lift, but then Thailand had to go and have all the political upheaval, so that dream ended a quick death. Now that I've found other cheapie chin-lipo options, the offer has been withdrawn on the grounds that they're too busy kitting Lulu for her private university this fall.

She's young, slim, lovely, with a wide smile. She'll be fine: she could look good in a paper sack. I, on the other hand, need some help.

First of all, I grew my hair out, as I couldn't honestly remember what color it was, and I had a sneaky suspicion it was not the lovely golden brown of yore. I was right: it is dirty dishwater with amazingly beautiful strands of sparkling pewter. However, the strands surrounding the pewter look like used tarnish remover, and this is not cute. You know what is great for people like me? Whose hair grows an inch or more a month and who are too damn busy and too damn fussy to mess with going to a beauty parlor every two weeks for a trim and color? Loving Care, that's what. But it's hell to find--I had to go to seven different stores to find four bottles to take back to a friend in China. (Note to Customs: yes, this would be one reason why even my luggage is overweight.) It now occurs to me I could have ordered it online to be delivered to my parents' house, but I forgot. I'm OLD, ok? I have moved 27 times in the last 18 years and I am starting to slip on the small details, like where Lulu's immunization booklet is. (The fact the air conditioner vomited water all over Boxes 1 and 2 of Important Documents as I was packing for this trip might have something to do with that.)

Second: I have stayed out of the sun most of my life, having a red-head's inability to tolerate sunlight, but I have noticed massive droop. Those Immigration agents at the airport had the nerve to ask if I was Lulu's older sister: Liars. They are not flirting with me, they are flirting with HER, and I am the means through which they operate. This is exactly the same feeling I had in high school when out with my friend Gayle: men would sidle up and ask me questions about her without making eye contract. I realize now that having a friend more lovely than you--or at least one who is willing to put out--is early training for a career as a duenna. But I digress. I have hideous scars on my stomach from liposuction-gone-wrong. Well, it wasn't that wrong: I didn't die or anything, but it was not done well (what do you expect for a hundred bucks?) and subsequent weight gain has rendered that area toxic. So I'm trying Strivectin, which I have used around my eyes (specially formulated!) with good effect.

I don't expect miracles, although one would sure come in handy right about now. When my holiday is over in a few days (va-kay to you Yanks)I will hop on a plane and go back to the murk and humidity of Beijing, where my bestest pal and my six-year-old godson are waiting to watch me unpack 21 boxes full of crap from moving. I'll start taking our dog The Dick (that's the dog, not the boyfriend) out for long walks, and power-walk with my Ipod on full blast so I don't have to hear the comments. In short, I'll stop eating Whoppers and drinking Yoo Hoo and without the additional poundage straining at my skin with every step I will just naturally look better. But I'm still going to smear myself with the magic ointment and hope that I will regain the youthful radiance of someone who thinks they actually have a shot at fame, fortune, love and money instead of someone who merely hopes to get through the week without getting into debt or pissing someone off.

A note: if you're in the dumps and you don't have an IPOD, get one. They are WOONNDERFULLLLL! I am not a big Apple fan but I have to say, having one of these babies is terrific. First of all, I can listen to music I like (Korgies,anyone? Actually, it's mostly Neil Finn and Crowded House with a twist of Boz Scaggs and Ella Fitzgerald) Second of all, it has a pedometer and I religiously get in at least 7,500 steps a day--and am aiming for a consistent 10,000. I would tell you how many calories that is, but then you could back track and extrapolate my weight off that (roughly that of a defensive lineman who likes to eat his Momma's cooking. A lot.) There are some things even I won't put into writing:this is one of them.

60's Mad Men Cocktail Party Needs Verisimilitude

So, in order to throw my good friend The Rose the 60's Mad Men Cocktail Birthday Party he's dreaming of, it seemed necessary to do a little research and planning. First of all, while I'm in the US, I had to hunt up the right recipes and rare ingredients. My ayi threw out my bottle of Angostura Bitters when I last moved, so I had to find a replacement bottle. (I can get them in Beijing but only at rather suspect shops where my friend the IP rights expert won't let me go as they carry impostor bottles of vodka and the like.) I already have a gross of paper umbrellas, so I don't have to mess with that, and the two ladies invited to the event (myself and the delectably petite Coco) are wearing dresses made of Saran Wrap. (A tad bit Total Woman but I've always wanted to try it.) But food! FOOD! Authentic tidbits can be easily rustled up, even though my kitchen is barely big enough to melt cheese it. (Seriously, my refrigerator is in the living room.) Our nibbles are made up of a wide variety of Real Meat Products, sausages and the like. But it's not enough to make authentic food, no matter how nauseating, you have to serve it in the authentic style. Thus The Tidbit Tree.

Oh, hell, everyone knows about The Tidbit Tree. It's a clear plastic tree, three dimensional, breath-takingly life-like as it stands up on its plastic roots in the middle of the cocktail trail, its limbs supporting a mishmash of delicious cocktail treats such as cheese cubes, cut-up Twinkies, and Lil' Smokies. My South African friends had hedgehogs (cubes of cheese stuck on toothpicks stuck into a half melon) but the Tidbit Tree was the dream of my childhood. It was usually advertised in the Sunday supplemental, a garish fold-out section in four color printing that drove my grandfather, a printer par excellence, into a screaming fit. I'm not sure what company advertised it--Lillian Vernon, maybe?--but my brain seemed to recall seeing it the last time I hit the States for a hiatus and I fixed my heart upon ordering one. After all, what's a dollar for a great gag prop?

Entire senility or peri-menopause or something. I couldn't find the section of the paper that advertised it. I went to the Dollar Tree. Nada. Big Lots? Not a thing, although I did get some of those crystals you get wet and smear on in place of deodorant as gifts for friends back home. I even screws up my courage and entered the Pack Rat Mecca that is my father's garage and searched through boxes of Mom's old catering dreck in search of the elusive Tidbit Tree. (Note: my mother has never been a caterer, she just likes to buy the stuff in case anyone asks her to make a wedding cake or something. Many ask once, but none ask twice.) Sickened more from the onslaught of useless bits of paper from my high school years more than anything else, I returned discouraged. Dang, I'm so very fond of The Rose, and he just HAD to have a Tidbit Tree! So I turned to the last resort of resorts, Google.

Surely Google will have at least a thousand good old fashioned Tidbit trees, I reasoned. Oh, sure: tons of fancy-schmancy "work bowl" trees and the like but no stunning rendition of forest beauty cast in pure petroleum bi-products...except for one site. With one tree. And it's advertised as being "rare and stunning" as well as "vintage" and I am also "helping the environment by recycling" which is what I tell myself when I have an artificial tree in Beijing (which I invariably kick to the curb by July because Ayi broke the stand, again. Shush: it's always gone within an hour, picked up by those eager little elves my neighbors who have decorated a manse or two on what I throw out weekly.) It's authentic! It's from the Sixties! So why does it say "Made in China"?

Yes, my deep fondness for The Rose, as well as my perfectionism and eye for detail have lead me to pay 12 bucks, plus five for shipping and handling, for a piece of shit plastic tree to spear wieners on which I have to schlepp back to Beijing in a suitcase already crammed full of shoes, tights, books, and my friend's Colon Cleanse from Blessed Herbs. Worse, I shall be hosting a party featuring this example of the nadir of my tastes and desires dressed in Sarah Wrap, which my mother points out will be good for my thighs, as it's both a way to lose water weight AND will control that nasty thigh jiggle. Coco would look elegant and gamine dressed in anything, and I must admit she will take up far less Saran Wrap than I. I haven't told her about the outfits yet--will soften her up with the tiny Coach bag I bought her at the outlets first--but I'm sure she's game. She's just that type of girl, and I am just that type of friend. I promise to post pictures--not of the results of David's Colon Cleanse which you can see for yourself on the Blessed Herb website-- but of the party. Any event that features a Crown Roast of Wienies, each topped with a whole caramelized onion surrounding a center of meltingly delicious hand-riced mashed potatoes, deserves to be immortalized on the Net with a photo or two.

Used Foods

I've just been on a quick trip to Used Foods, better known as "The Canned Food Warehouse" where I wandered, Clampett-like, for the better part of eight and a half minutes. (Come to think of it, Jethro's last name was Bodine.) Among the gems I unearthed were Personal Lubricant, 99 cents, which I didn't buy, as I have a creed not to treat my genitalia to anything costing under one dollar. There was a helluva lot of Belgian chocolate and a ton or so of powdered drink mixes, sweetened with Splenda and fortified with all sorts of vitamins, minerals, and herbal extracts. Hey, add the St. John's wort you like, it's still a pack of SHITTY CHEMICALS THAT HARM YOUR BODY. It is no longer necessary for me to buy ALL of my favorite junky foods when I see them--merely patting many of them them is enough, although I will admit to letting out a squeal and buying a box of Quisp. The squeal, prolonged and protracted, did not shame Lulu as she's used to my overreactions, but as she pointed out, if I had actually spotted a box of Count Chocula, for which I have a passion long unslaked, it might have provoked a seizure. As it was I merely reinforced the interest of a passing black man who looked at me with great appreciation, which was extremely nice. I could read his thoughts: hey, if she gets THAT excited over a box of CEREAL, imagine what she'd do for a little monkey lovin'! (A shame he'll never find out.)

In the past, any trip to the US meant that I spent a lot of time buying and gorging on shite I would never normally touch--Little Debbie springs to mind, that wee pawky minx--but now I find it's just enough to look at them and laugh and maybe read part of their labels. FYI, the label of "ingredients" on a packet of Little Debbie snack cakes, while horrifying, is still printed in bigger type than the instructions on a Chinese home pregnancy test. Note to myself and others: if you have to squint to read the directions and hold the box out at arm's length--but still can't manage to read the directions--you are too old to be knocked up. P.S. After 18 + years of being told how unattractive I am to Chinese eyes, how lovely to find a fit, toned man of sensible years looking at me as if I am lamb chop and he a big, bad wolf.

Ass Wide Shut

My daughter Lulu and I appear semi-regularly on Chinese tv. This is no great cause for celebration, because if you’re a foreigner and you hang out here long enough, you pretty much always end up being offered a show of your own. (I actually have filmed more than one pilot and never at my own expense.) I used to appear regularly on a children’s show as Miss Sunshine. The awfulness of my part was compounded by the fact I wrote the segment I appeared on. Fifteen minutes a day I bored small children with my toothy grin while spouting great lines such as, “Yes, the monkey is playing with a cock!” Lulu was a child star, which meant a lot of variety shows, sometimes as the Precocious Child Star, sometimes merely as Foreign Kid. In our defense, we never watched ourselves on TV, and seldom knew the name of the shows we were on. We didn’t ask anyone to watch us, partly out of modesty, and partly out of apathy: We knew how bad we were and couldn’t think of any reason why we’d want to share that joy. We were often requested to appear together, but were seldom invited back as a team. We are, you see, incorrigible.

I don’t mean we’re rude. We don’t complain about the box lunches, or the working conditions, or the 22-hour shoots. (Well, I did complain once about my hair do in Heilongjiang, but there’s a long story behind that.) The problem is that when we’re together faced with the tedium of a hard day’s shoot under the lights, we get a little punch drunk and start giggling.

I also don’t mean to suggest that we screw around on the set. I am the best of stage moms: My kid shows up on time, well-rested, and with her lines memorized, and I turn her over to the director and sit down and read until she’s finished. As foreigners, we are invariably forced to sit with the studio audience when we’re not performing, with at least two cameras trained on us at all times, in order to catch our facial reactions. These are edited into the show in a manner we refer to as “foreigners on parade.” Sometimes these reaction shots are broadcast cut into shows on networks we never even heard of. We are stock footage, the punch line on tap, and as China’s only fat working foreign actress, my expressions of merriment, puzzlement, and awe are in high demand.

However, as I mentioned, we are seldom invited back as a team. Our mirth goes too far. We have sat as sober and solemn as judges while Peking Opera performers broke rank to come forth shyly and sing “Memories” from Cats, Peking Opera style, and never let on that we were dying inside. We have sat through “The Sound of Music” as sung by a choir of deaf children (there’s an oxymoron) and had tears of sentiment spill forth at the politically correct moment. I have been filmed leaping to my feet and shouting “Jia You!” (Way to go!) as paralyzed ballroom dancers did the tango in their manually operated wheel chairs. In short, I try hard to do what’s required of me—to be a good guest—but sometimes, with Lulu at my side, I just fail.

Case in point: the most dramatic instance of our demonry got us banned from a certain TV station for life. Lulu was appearing as some damn thing or another a few years back on a kid’s show. Prior to filming the show, we were sent to be part of the audience while the warm-up act got the audience in a merry mood. The audience was all keyed up and excited and would have applauded just about anything, which is exactly want you want in a TV audience (a shame we can’t rent them to Jimmy Kimmel) and as we took our seats we realized that three—not one—but three cameras were on us to capture our reaction shots. Lulu was already a bit tense from her upcoming performance and I was knackered, having gotten up out of bed around three to make the six a.m. makeup call. (It should be noted that we got there as directed at six for make-up—and the rest of the cast and crew arrived somewhere around eleven.) So we sat, tired, tense, with cameras trained on us, and tried to smile gamely.

A whisper of music filled the stage. A stage door creaked, stopped, then was roughly jerked open by an invisible hand so that a performer could lurch out. A young girl, perhaps eighteen, sullenly crossed the stage, microphone in hand. As the music swelled, she began to tap one foot, clad in a hideous Minnie Mouse pink platform clog, slightly off beat with the music. She was dressed in hip hugger jeans, with a sequined bra, and had two Mickey Puffs for a hairdo. (You know, the type little black girls wear—adorable on them, not so good on a Chinese girl.) She was heavily made up, but what was most apparent was her bored, I’m-just-here-to-bop-the-boss expression. Lulu and I took one look at each other, then glanced at the huge Minnie Mouse clogs—one tapping offbeat—then burst into soft chuckles.

The director whirled around and screamed, “STOP THE TAKE!” (only it sounded more like “Stoppur der tekur”) and gave us an evil look. As soon as he looked back at the girl we knew the score—she was his babe—and we tried to compose ourselves. She stomped off stage, Minnie Mouse clogs thumping all the way, and went back behind the door to await her cue. The music began—the stage door rocked the set as a stage hand gave it an invisible but overenthusiastic push—and the girl lurched out again, mic in hand, sullen expression fixed in place. She hit her mark (always an iffy procedure for the amateur) and her foot began its tap-tap-tap. Lulu and I let out a yelp of laughter while the director screamed and the audience gazed at us. What the hell were we laughing about anyway? The director raged—the girl blinked vapidly at us—we tried to stop laughing and eventually the third take was ready to roll.

Cue the music. Cue the rickety stage door. Cue the girl. The foot began to tap. Lulu and I bit our cheeks and did not look at each other. The cameramen sighed in relief and pulled in for a tight shot, not of the girl, but of us. We were behaving.

And then—and then—Languid Beauty the Performer lifted her arms above her head and invited the audience to clap along. She had neglected to perform a certain act of personal grooming (like, ever) and two hairy pits completed her look. Her hands didn’t even have time to clap together once before Lulu and I gave a shout of laughter and collapsed onto one another, shrieking with mad joy, eyes shut tight as we cried with the glorious pain of it all.

This time the director really lost it. He jumped off his platform and ran towards us, megaphone in hand, shrieking insults. “You—you FUCKS!” he screamed in English. “You OPEN your ASS and SMELL!” Well, that did it—we FOLKS being screamed at to open our EYES and SMILE was the last bit of instruction we needed. We fell off the chairs, kicking and screaming, hooting and whooping, while the audience looked around as if to gauge whether this grand mal seizure required the judicious use of a spoon. When we finally stopped laughing, and a stage hand kicked us off set, we were handed a note that said, “Lulu is welcome to coming but his mother no.”

This was, I think, supposed to hurt my feelings, but it did not. First of all, Lulu forgot to hand me the note, and I didn’t find it until I was washing her costume a week later, and second of all, I could hardly feel angry about being chastised for my less-than-perfect behavior. If only the girl hadn’t had that expression on her face—or tapped that huge pink shoe off beat—or had shaved her pits! But regret gets us nowhere, and we pulled two good things off the experience: first, my daughter’s performance earned us enough to pay that month’s phone bill, and second, our family motto was finally and firmly established: Open your ass and smell, you fucks.

Commie Girl Scouts

My daughter Lulu was a member of the Commie Girl Scouts. You may know them by their correct title, Young Pioneers. She wore a red scarf and sang songs with a group of other red-scarved children. When she transferred to a hipper school in third grade, someone remembered that she was actually a US citizen and she got kicked out. This made her mad, but it also awakened her to the first faint realization that injustices exist. She came to two conclusions: you can be a patriot, or you can be a good person who loves the whole world and you’ll probably get excoriated if anyone recognizes this about you, but what the hell. In that moment, she shifted from being Mao’s Little Sunbeam to being an ardent proponent of recycling and Living Green.

This is not a super popular choice. I don’t get involved in politics, except for the politics of living: ie, I don’t throw anything of a private nature into the collective garbage can unless I WANT my neighbors to know about it (“Hey, Lao Wang! That lady in 202 isn’t pregnant, she’s just fat! I have the proof!”) But the green movement, while afoot, is hardly awash with a ton of new recruits. 10,000 new cars hit the road EVERY DAMN MONTH in my city alone, making it a city full of the world’s most expensive cars driven by the world’s worst drivers. People who once practiced economy ostensibly in favor of ecology throw their garbage out the windows of their brand new BMWs as soon as they can afford it. They weren’t being green before, they were being cheap. Now that the dollar is worth squat and the RMB is king, they can afford to be as destructive as they want to be. Green is for suckers, don’t you know.

Now my daughter is choosing a college major, and she’s thinking of becoming an environmental engineer. As soon as she says, “Engineer” people here gasp in happiness and joy: when she mentions the “environmental” part, tongues are clicked in disapproval. No money in it, you see. And if there’s no money in it, what’s the point? (My Chinese friends are horrified that I have not one—but TWO Master’s degrees in Education. "What’s the point?" they wail, "You just play with kids all day!") My old friend Tina Whitman (where are you, lassie?) used to say, “Die young, stay pretty.” Apparently the Chuppy creed (oh come on now, you saw that one coming, Chinese Urban Professional) has changed from “We are Mao’s Little Sunflowers” to something more like this: “Whole world dying, I don’t care, Me got Beamer!”

Forno

Right now, Western is In. Girls wear Western clothing, or what they fondly imagine to be Western clothing. (It is, for hookers.) Last week on the plane I sat next to a grandma with dyed black hair teased into a beehive clad in black leather shorts, black tights, and knee-high brown boots with huge silver buckles. She had a top on as well, but I was leary of bringing my eyes up that far—I was too enthralled with the truly awful boots. She was very proud of looking, as she told me, like a Westerner. To me, Western means there’s a horse or cowboy on it somewhere. Should I wear my faux pony-hide ballet slippers, I will be laughed off the airplane. I complemented her on her choice of outfit—and tried not to look at her sticky double-tape-created false eye folds, fearing that if I did so, I might reach out and touch one. But what the hell, I once went to a high school football gave in the States wearing a Mandarin-collared coat, a coolie hat, and the sort of shoes we knew as “Jap Flats.” (They’re actually Chinese.) She felt hot: why would I condemn that?

What pisses me off no end, however, is the latest “Western” phenomenon that I have labeled, for lack of better term, Forno. Forno is the practice—usually performed by young girls—of having themselves photographed while eating Western food, then posting the images up on a web site somewhere to show how dang sophisticated they are. My daughter and I were first introduced to Forno about three years ago at a local Canadian-style diner called Paul’s. It was Thanksgiving. The place was packed with foreign people who had called ahead for reservations months in advance. Two local girls sauntered in and took over a table which was clearly marked “reserved.” They insisted that the harried wait staff give them the regular menu—not the Price Fixe holiday menu—and they ordered a bizarre combination of food that went together about as well as caviar-coated Twinkies served with a side of Horlick’s, with a Budweiser chaser. I believe they ordered a Salty Dog (grapefruit juice with vodka) a chocolate milkshake, spaghetti with garlic bread, a Tequila sunrise, milk, orange juice, a hamburger, French toast, a pecan waffle, Salisbury steak, and fish and chips. Sides included a salad for which they had the foresight to order extra Thousand Island dressing.

As the waitress staggered out with each order, the girls took turns spearing a piece of food with a fork, bringing it daintily to their lips, then snapping a picture. The fork went down immediately while the model inspected the shot on the digital camera. After much discussion, the photo was either discarded, or posted to their web site. Then the OTHER girl would speak a chunk of food on a fork—or sometimes, as a nice alternative, a knife or spoon, and pose for a head shot of gee—HOW CUTE—a Chinese girl eating Western food. The shots were downright pornographic—hence the “orno” part of the name—although none went so far as to deep throat a banana. At no time was any food actually consumed, I might add. Much of it fell on the floor and they squealed in outrage when a French fry fell on one of their fake Louis Vuitton bags. (They made the waitress come over and pick it up for them.)

Now, I’m not exactly Miss Manners over here. I spear things on forks and choke them down myself. I don’t correct my Chinese friends when they are served hamburgers open-face and gravely eat them one half at a time—first the lettuce-tomato-mayo top bun half, then the lower half with the patty on it. I don’t even glare too much at the Chinese people who snigger condescendingly at me when I eat a slice of pizza with my hands. So who am I to care about girls playing Food Whore? So what if they’re showing how sophisticated they are by snapping pix of themselves digging into a pile of fries. Shit, that Mark Salzman has a picture of one of his book jackets showing his bare arms bulging with muscle while he digs with chopsticks into a to-go carton of (presumably) Chinese food. Now that I think about it, that’s probably where they got the idea in the first place. And yet—and yet—when I see it, I get pissed off all over again.

I am having lunch at home today so that I’m not subjected to the awful sight of a girl peeping suggestively over a chicken leg, but also, I confess, because the mac and cheese is about to go off and I want to finish it rather than throw it away. The guy who paws through the garbage outside really gave me hell last week for tossing out some Limburger given me by an admirer (how can you tell if it’s gone off? I mean, it’s Limburger! Who the hell gives a love interest stinky cheese?) If there is any way to eat mac and cheese suggestively, I will promise not to post a picture of such. Your imagination, I’m sure, is so much better.

I (heart) China Dot Commies

Yeah, yeah, you came here to be all spiritual because Oriental people are so in tune and don’t care about money. Never mind that you’re a chubby little white boy with poor social skills (or the alternate model, the tall skinny white boy with far too many imaginary friends) you hope that by speaking Chinese fluently you can get a waitress in a Chinese restaurant back in the States to make out with you. Once you plug her, you discover the only source of power you’re ever gonna have: it’s not your manly bits, it’s the promise of a green card. Oh, yeah. Citizenship. It’s an aphrodisiac!

Of course, being the star that you are, you think it’s your superior lingual skills that are bringing all the women to you in droves. Mmm, ever stop to wonder why they only women you have dated in the US are Asian exchange students? And not the super cute ones who have wealthy Indonesian boyfriends—you’re hangin’ with the unattached babes. One suggests you visit her cousin in Shanghai and you book a flight for summer Va-Kay. You didn’t just visit, you LIVED there, man, for 19 whole days! Let’s call it three weeks. Hell, let’s call it a month. Hell, no, let’s call it THE WHOLE SUMMER because you almost made it with a babe over there.

Lesser men than you have traveled greater distances with fewer advantages in the hopes of getting a leg over. You move to China as soon as you graduate. You land a job. You may even take some time off to study Chinese at one of the local universities. You read Lu Xin. You write rap in Chinese. You think about gettin’ some. You do.

Other people—friends, really—point out that you have one girlfriend after another. They’re all the same: tiny little things who are not from Beijing who twit you incessantly about your errors in Chinese while sipping Diet Coke from a straw in front of you—then wolf down steak and cheese in private. When you take the latest Love of Your Life to meet the circle of acquaintances who have, against their better judgment, let you share some small corner of their lives, they shake their heads in disgust. You think it’s admiration: after all, during your dinner together, during which your girlfriend proved her ultimate femininity by eating a single grain of corn, she managed to impress everyone deeply with her intense concentration in sending and receiving a steady stream of text messages to people who were not at the table. Her little fingers flew like birds skimming across a freshly planted field of rice, oblivious to the presence of strangers. Twice she leaves the table to puke up something she ate in 1997.

“Isn’t she something?” you say proudly as her wizened figure recedes towards the pit toilet behind the restaurant.

“Oh, yeah, she’s somethin’ all right,” one of the crowd replies lamely. The rest of the table exchange knowing looks. Damn, he’s dating another one of Those. How many more weeks until it blows up in his face and he spends the weekend alternately sobbing on the sofa and sweating all over the sheets? How many more Fritos do his friends have to shove down his throat until he gets the message?

Years pass. The friends struggle on. You meet and marry your Dream Girl, who comes with not only a bucket of money, but a Dream Job. You’re now more famous than that old crowd of friends who let you hang with them occasionally. You meet in the street: as Old Friend hands you her card and says something lame and insincere like “Keep in touch” she notices your wife flick it out of your hand into a garbage bin. Well, Old Friend thinks, at least this one isn’t a litterbug.

The Weather With You

k, so I’m not really talking about China here, I’m talking about Chinese people—largely Han—who live in China. Here’s the deal: no matter what the weather is, it will kill you. You, a foreigner, don’t wear enough clothes. You have the wrong sort of umbrella. And those waterproof hiking boots you bought for scaling up a damp and scenic path are going to make you sick! You’re not pregnant, are you? Ai-ya, your feet got wet: now your baby won’t have eyes!

No matter how nice it is outside, your Chinese friends will find some reason to behave as if it’s lethal. If it is truly awful, they will assure you that it’s fine and that you are just a big spoiled Western baby. True example: Several weeks ago, before Spring Festival, it became bitterly cold in Beijing, with a wind like a knife slicing through your layers of wool and down and filth. One of my students got frostbite running outside to check on her locked bike. The high temperature for most days was a bracing -3 degrees Farenheit, and that’s not including the wind chill factor. The ancient radiators barely breathed a sparrow’s worth of warm air into the frigid concrete rooms we live and teach in. My thermometer registered 42 degrees F as the high at both home and school. I was cold. I mentioned this to the boss of the Foreign Affairs Department.

“Nonsense,” she replied, “I have to open up the windows in my house because it’s too hot. You just don’t wear enough clothes.” Note: she doesn’t live in the crap building the teachers live in, she has the deluxe accommodation reserved for Chinese people. I then demonstrated to her how many layers I was wearing: One set of merino wool long johns and matching long-sleeved shirt, a layer of cotton tights, a layer of Insulate long johns on top of that, a pair of wool pants, a long-sleeved silk turtleneck, and a heavy cashmere sweater. I had on insulated work boots in black suede as well as an extra pair of cashmere sox. I completed this nifty ensemble with a black wool beret (chic at any cost, that’s me) and a black cashmere wrap which I used like a blanket when I sat to type at my desk. For the record, I also wore a bra and panties, but that’s a given. Frankly, I was so wrapped up in clothing that I couldn’t bend over to retrieve dropped chalk and I appointed a monitor in the classroom to do so for me. As I stripped down and showed off each layer, I was greeted with gales of laughter by The Boss.

“Oh, you are so foolish,” she chuckled. “Your clothes are so big! Maybe you could take a walk at lunch today instead of eating, get some exercise and fresh air.”

I was, at that time, limping badly and could barely stand through my 40-minute lectures. The thought of stumping down the street and around the track in the Arctic wonderland of Beijing did not strike me as a particularly attractive alternate to having lunch at home with my dog Dickie curled up on my lap.

Several weeks later, the weather warmed up considerably, and we had a mild snowfall. I mean, a quarter of an inch at most. It was 30 degrees higher (F) than the previous weeks and I encouraged my students to go outside and enjoy the sights. The Boss shrieked in horror. “Don’t tell the students to go outside! It is too cold! It is snowing! Ai-ya, that stuff can get on you and kill you!”

Ironically, the day before the temperature had dropped to the usual low teens and yet the students had been called to a general meeting of an hour’s duration on the playing field and forced to stand at attention in sub-zero temperatures to display their school spirit. At least they didn’t have to wave little red books. But to WALK in the SNOW—that is just inviting death into your front parlor now, isn’t it?

Chinese people believe wind gives you arthritis, rain causes diarrhea, and sunshine makes your skin dark and ugly (they have that one right.) Since I have had arthritis, I can attest that my left shoulder hurts like a mother before big wind storms, and rain makes my legs ache badly. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) believes the body struggles to maintain a balance among the five elements—wood, fire, earth, metal, and water—and eight guiding principles which include cold and heat. A condition such as arthritis is caused by too much wind, too much cold, and too much dampness. Considering my hot and lethal temper, my bout with arthritis comes as kind of a shock. The basic tenets of TCM have, I think, seeped into people’s consciousness to the point where the REAL weather is seen as the culprit, rather than the internal elements. Thus if you stomped in a rain puddle at the age of four and your mother didn’t stop you, she is branded as a lazy slut and you are probably going to die of heart disease at age 40 as a result. In other words, she’s as negligent a mother as the woman I’d see at the local convenience store/gas station back in Oregon who was buying her kids Luden Cough Drops to suck on for breakfast so they’d shut up and behave at school.

Enchanted? Or Merely Dazed?

Shut up already. I DID decide to host ads--not for the thrill of annoying my elderly parents with the pains of depositing a two-cent check to my bank account, but rather for the sheer joy of logging on to find out what Google, in its infinite wisdom, chose to advertise in my blog that day. It's sort of at arranged marriage made by a matchmaker who doesn't know you that well and doesn't really give a rat's ass either. I am hoping that I am NOT advertising PayDay Loans, or Get the Monster C@ck You Deserve! (I'm so afraid that would still have a man attached to it) but I have to admit I get such a kick out of reading a friend's Facebook ad and automatically getting directed to a site for "Plus Size Over Forty Lovin'!" It would be too ironic if my first ad was for some crappy credit union and not for say something I love (Strivectin, J'Adore Dior, Target, See's Chocolate).

Starting

So, I've been kicking around this idea of blogging for a while. I even paid some Aussie loser a wad of cash to design the perfect site for me (ie, low tech, easy access, lots of retro graphics) but he shot off his big toe, got blood poisoning, and neglected to show up for court (largely because of the ensuing coma.) Anyway, he's Doing Time now, so that left me on my own to design The Blog. I went to good ol' Blogspot and started designing a new blog, only to have the site banned in China. Then I moved--twice--was fired--was offered a ton of new jobs which were, alas, mostly shite, packed up my daughter's apartment, flew from Beijing to Salem, Oregon, to Boston, back to Salem, and am now sitting down long enough to let my feet depuff while I take the plunge and just start posting. Sadly, the witty articles that were going to bring me fame and fortune--or at least get me some, heh-heh-heh--are on my hard drive back in Beijing, and I'm not going back there for another ten days. Blogging world, you will have to make due with my spontaneous wit wrung out from quick dashes to the only working computer in the house in the odd moment when Dad isn't gazing morosely at pictures of Naval ships or my daughter isn't using Ren Ren (like Facebook, but in Chinese.) Oh yes, one thing to add: my mother will gaze at me as I type and occasionally pat my arm. If this isn't distracting, then I don't know what is.