The Secret to Good Postal Service

I live in a "communist" (more properly "socialist") country. Well, in name anyway. (In reality the world's lowest concentration of actual communists is in the Chinese Communist Party.) As such I live in, at least by popular perception, a surveillance state in which every move I make is watched by the agents of the state. This paranoid worldview has some merit, of course. Just to make sure people don't think I've gone native and am acting as an apologist for China's government let me make it abundantly clear: the Chinese government is evil. More evil, even, than the American government or the Canadian government. (The fact that the Dalai Lama is more evil than the Chinese government is a separate issue that I'll address at some other point.) The problem with using the word "evil", however, is that to most people this brings up comic book imagery—evil for the sake of doing evil—and that is patently not true. The evil has a purpose and a direction and, as a result, can actually be dealt with. We are not talking psychopaths exhulting in their service to evil here, we're talking normal people without the usual checks and balances that other, slightly less evil, societies place upon them.

So why am I babbling about evil as a precursor to talking about good postal service? Well, it's instructional, you see. Most expatriates living in China have the cartoon version of evil in their heads and are convinced that lurking behind every wall and around every corner is an agent of the 公安 (Public Security Bureau, a.k.a. police) just waiting to do something hopelessly evil for kicks. My first teaching partner in Jiujiang was that way. She would tell me tales in hushed breath of finding a microphone concealed inside a Santa Claus candle that was only exposed because the candle burned down to the point where you could see it. (She told it as a first-person story. Oddly enough, so have about two dozen other people from all around the country which leads me to believe that either these people are all passing along an urban legend as personal fact or that Santa Claus candles are very common surveillance tools spread all over China. I know which I believe.)

There I go again, talking about evil and not about postage. Well, the thing is, you see, that China Post is known for opening mail. Packages especially. Most expatriates have had lots of experience with getting packages in the mail that had been very obviously opened, rifled through and then passed on to them. And, of course, this leads to suspicions that things have been removed. (In many cases things have been removed, in fact.)

I don't have this experience. In eight years of living here I've had two packages opened and three which went astray. (There was also one that was delayed by a humourous whole year.) And the reason why? Basic psychology at work.

Yes, China Post opens mail. (So does Canada Post, incidentally. And every other mail system in the world. But since they're not labelled with the "communist" pejorative people assume it's for a "good" reason.) The trick to not getting your mail opened is to be aware that the people opening it aren't comic book villains. They're underpaid, overworked ordinary people just like you. In short, they're lazy. Just like you. If they have a choice of packages in front of them to inspect, they're going to take the one that's easy to open. The packages my mother sends (like the one I got today) are no such thing. My mother probably single-handedly props up various tape manufacturing companies' stock prices just by the way she packages the boxes. At least five metres of tape wrap every parcel. The parcel I got today might have had a grand total of 20 square centimetres untaped. This is not a parcel that's easy to open. This is the kind of parcel that an overworked, underpaid worker just like you is going to pass over in favour of another parcel that's got thin paper wrapping it (if any) and a few pieces of tape strategically placed to hold it in place.

That is how you get good postal service in China.

Contrasts

Another busy week. I started a WUISS Linux User's Group (hopefully to expand into a Wuhan Linux User's Group) and the WUISS English Club.

At the former I pretty much organised it all myself and did the keynote speech ("What Is Linux and Why Would I Want to Use It?") since Linux is so rare in China. I had about 18 people attend with 14 staying through the whole meeting. One small problem developed when my laptop's CD drive refused to burn anything. (That's about the fourth laptop in a row, from three manufacturers, whose built-in CD-ROM screwed up. I hate laptops sometimes.) More people will probably show up at the next meeting in two weeks.

At the latter I was smarter. The goal here is to give the students their own English Corner -- one made for and by the students and run by the students. I'm acting in a strictly advisory capacity and as the teacher who gives them credibility when they're asking for funds, equipment, locations, etc. I'm doing as little work as possible there because I want the students to find out for themselves how hard it is to organise things. Yesterday was the first activity they ran and it went reasonably well. The only thing that really got screwed up was the advertising, something we'll be talking about next meeting.

Spring is finally springing here in Wuhan and I can finally answer a question that I'm frequently asked. "What is it that keeps you in China?" Nowadays the answer is more obvious in the form of Joan, but I was in China two years before I moved to the city Joan was in and four-and-a-half years before I married her. What kept me here all that time?

The answer is a single word: contrasts.

China can be a profoundly ugly country. Buildings look dilapidated less than two years after they're built. Everything is dirty and grimy. The air is so polluted I rarely see blue in the sky, and when I do it's a blue with an unhealthy brown tint. Yet intermixed with all this deep ugliness is equally profound beauty. I don't just mean my wife, either!

Consider for example the photo (taken by my lovely, talented wife) at the top left of this blog entry. This is an example of the profound beauty I'm talking about. It doesn't show, however, the contrasts I'm speaking of. For those you have to look to the photo to the right (taken by the significantly less lovely and less talented me). Here the cherry tree in full bloom (part of a long line of them along an alley you can see in the photo below) is stunningly beautiful. The photograph simply doesn't do it justice! Yet around it is a wall that's crumbling, a building that's falling apart and just general signs of decay and unpleasantness. It's the kind of contrast that makes me swoon (nearly) and keeps me interested in this place. Somehow the juxtaposition of ugliness next to beauty makes the beauty more mysterious and captures my imagination.

So I stay.

Aren't They Just The Cutest Thing?!

So, on Monday I begin the daily grind again. It's about time. I really don't enjoy holidays like this very much, you see. Travel is basically impossible unless you want to travel out of country or by plane. (Every expat needs to experience travelling over Spring Festival once while they're here. But only once.) Most places that would be of interest to me are one of:

• closed;
• overcrowded;
• overpriced;
• both overcrowded and overpriced.

So Spring Festival is, instead, a time of high stress family visits interspersed among long periods of intense boredom. You can't even do any decent shopping for geek toys or the like over much of that period.

So, needless to say, I'm looking forward to going back to work.

In traditional Chinese fashion I got sent my teaching schedule just shortly before the break began, too late for me to point out to them that the document they sent me couldn't be read. (It's a) in Chinese and b) garbled.) So I didn't even know which classes/subjects I'd be teaching until just this Thursday, not to mention small, unimportant details like where I'd be teaching them or when. I did finally get that information (with only one small question outstanding, but not requiring resolution until next week Wednesday -- so I expect to have an answer Tuesday night) just in time to plan lessons and arrange notes.

And today the monitor of one of my classes sends me an SMS message asking "will you be teaching us this term?". My answer is the typically Chinese one: "Maybe". Of course in context that means "yes". The monitor's response was a single word that makes me glad for my time spent in China. "Great!"

I didn't stay in China because of my employers. I didn't stay in China because of my coworkers (although I always found one or two at each place I liked -- Hello Nick, Wendy & Xiaoling!). I did stay in China to pursue the girl who later became my wife, but there was two years before that to account for.

No, the reason I stayed in China long enough to find the girl who'd later be my wife is simply the students. With the exception of the students attending the ratbag RMIT English Worldwide program at the Wuhan University of Science and Technology's International School (the non-REW students, too, were great!) my experience with students in China has been universally positive. My current school is no exception.

The "L"-Word

A question posed in a colleague's email today got me to thinking. The subject? The dreaded (by ignorant elements of the expat community) "L-Word": 老外 (laowai). It's the generic Chinese word for "foreigner" and is formed of the character for "old" and "outside". There is a persistent myth, spread in all sorts of places that "laowai" is a pejorative.

I'll just go on the record right away as saying this is bullshit.

I've always pretty much considered this view bullshit from a little bit of sleuthing (hint: look it up in the "word ocean" -- the Chinese language's equivalent of the OED and see if it's flagged as a pejorative or not) and because my two best friends in China (and the nicest married couple in the world) did not look embarrassed when others used it in my presence, but just to be certain I went to a source I trust: my wife.

Her answer was unequivocal. "What?!" was the first response. This was followed by "Of course not!" (That she herself has no problems using the word in my presence was another significant hint, BTW.) After my providing the context -- some foreigners feel it is an insulting term -- and a few moments' confusion she finally asked "Why would they think it was an insult?"

Her reactions were spontaneous, instantaneous and as honest as I've ever seen. That pretty much settles it for me.

The so-called evidence used to "prove" that the term is insulting includes this damning piece: "They never address you as 'laowai' so it must be an insult!" This is, to put not too fine a point on it, the most specious piece of bullshit reasoning I've ever heard. They don't call me "Jianadaren" (Canadian) to my face either. Am I to infer from that little fact that being called a Canadian is a pejorative too?

The primary reason they don't address foreigners as "laowai" is quite simple: unlike "laoshi" (teacher) or "laopo" (wife--affectionate) or "laogong" (husband--affectionate), "laowai" is not a term used to address people. It is not a title. It is a noun. I am not "Yan laowai" like I am "Yan laoshi". It has nothing to do with insults and everything to do with basic vocabulary!

Another piece of "evidence" is that they don't refer to you as "laowai" in formal circumstances. They use instead words like 外国人 ("waiguoren" -- lit. "outside nation person").

Well, duh. Welcome to the wild, wooly, wonderful world of "register" and "formality". "Waiguoren" is the formal register. It is used in circumstances where formality is expected and most interaction with strangers, unlike in the English-speaking world, is considered relatively formal in China. "Laowai", in contrast, is informal register more suited to banter in informal situations. Indeed it is "waiguoren" contracted and having the neutral "lao" put in front (in the same vein as "laohu" means "tiger" not "old tiger", "laoshu" means "mouse" not "old mouse" and so on) to distinguish it from other uses of "wai". The Chinese don't use "laowai" in interaction with us for the same reason we don't typically say "Hey Dude!" to the boss in a new job in place of "Hello, Sir/Ma'am".

You will find, if you Google on "laowai", a plethora of nonsense where people will insist, quite vociferously, that "laowai" is a pejorative (to to the bemusement of the locals). Why would this be if it really isn't an insult?

Enter speculation.

I think that the people who believe "laowai" is an insult are people who harbour in their own thoughts disdain and distaste for the locals. Whether this comes from the typical white arrogance you find in expats around the world (especially the British ones in my experience, but not exclusively them) or if it comes from a reaction to culture shock, the fact remains that a lot of expats everywhere in the world harbour concealed (or not-so-concealed) dislike for the locals around them. Enter the very Freudian notion of "projection" -- attributing undesired or shameful thoughts and attributes onto others. They feel dislike for the people around them but cannot, for a variety of reasons, admit this even to themselves. So they instead claim that it is the others who are intolerant and who have the hatred, not them.

And it doesn't hurt that most western countries, especially the USA (and to a lesser extent Canada), simply adore victims. Everybody wants to belong to a victim group, so if you're white and middle-class, why not just make one up to apply to you?