June, 2010 | Speaking of China

Travel China with the Yangxifu: Shang Dynasty Wall Ruins, Zhengzhou, China

Walking next to the mounds that mark the Shang Dynasty Wall Ruins

Men sitting on the Shang Dynasty — It's not just a mound -- it marks the spot where the walls of an ancient Shang Dynasty town once stood...in a place that doubles as a park and, for the men featured, a place to squat and talk.

It’s one thing to see China’s history in a museum, and another to walk on it.

In Zhengzhou’s Eastern city outskirts, you’ll find a curious mound of earth that runs through a park — the kind of park in China filled with Tai Chi practitioners, grandparents tending children in crotchless pants, inflatable play areas, and neat tiled squares and walkways. But you shouldn’t let the surroundings fool you. This is not just another park, and that’s not just another grass-covered mound. That mound marks the the site of where walls around a Shang Dynasty city once stood. Continue reading “Travel China with the Yangxifu: Shang Dynasty Wall Ruins, Zhengzhou, China”

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Chapter 72: Private Parts in China

Jeans zippered down — When I need a doctor to look at my private parts in China, I am reminded just how elusive privacy really is.

To a foreigner, the most precious resource in China might just be privacy. If you start out as an English teacher, like I did, you learn to roll with untimely knocks at your door, appearing before your students in pajamas, or well-intentioned Chinese forcing medicine after medicine on your poor weary foreign self that you wouldn’t even let your best friend see. Some moments and circumstances demand a privacy that China just can’t give us.

I desperately needed privacy this one weekend in early August when I sought help for what every woman likes to refer to as her “female problems.”

Chinese hospitals work like this. You go to the information/check-in desk at the front, usually mobbed by people, and shove yourself in as you announce your symptoms, in front of everyone there. Easy enough if you have a cough or headache. But what do you do when it’s a little more, well, personal?

“I need to see the gynecological department,” I told them. Surely, this was the perfect solution — by naming the department, the nurse would know I needed a little help under the hood, and get me registered to see a doctor. Continue reading “Chapter 72: Private Parts in China”

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Ask the Yangxifu: Where’s the love from my Chinese man?

Heart drawn in the moisture on a bathroom mirror — A woman wonders why her Chinese man doesn't show her love or affection, or give compliments.

Missing Dimension asks:

I am white, and I know my Chinese S.O. loves me, but he never says so. No affection, touching, except in the bedroom. No compliments. No flirting. He is 62, born in Hong Kong, and lived in Canada a little while. Mostly lived in NY. He can be highly critical. But I have controlled this to some extent. Is this normal for a highly educated Chinese American man? There seems to be a whole dimension of our relationship left out.

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In Chinese culture, I’d say your man is nothing out of the ordinary. Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Where’s the love from my Chinese man?”

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Chapter 71: Migrant Workers in Our Staircase

Chinese migrants — When a noisy Shanghai city works project brings migrant workers into our home -- literally -- I begin to wonder: just whose life is being disturbed?

Our neighborhood still echoes with a sour symphony of drills and hammers as the city of Shanghai makes water line repairs and fire extinguisher replacements.

The project finally reached our house in mid July, 2003, with work starting at the convenient hour of 6am (convenient, that is, from the point of view of Shanghai, which would never have its workforce toil in the heat of the day). The swarthy-faced men descended on our home like an invading army, with the grimaced, sweaty brows of exhausted soldiers in a foreign land. The truth is, Shanghai probably was a foreign place to them, because they had the look of migrant workers, perhaps from Anhui Province (which supplied many of the Shanghai migrants). I should know, because I walked over them, napping on the wooden staircase leading up to my apartment — the entire house oozed with grimy, slumbering men, as if they had just magically grown out of the cracks after I left for work that morning. Continue reading “Chapter 71: Migrant Workers in Our Staircase”

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