foreign woman | Speaking of China

Chapter 74: F@lun G0ne

664559_21620051 — During a reunion lunch with one of my favorite former Chinese coworkers, Jane, I discover she's gone over to F@lun G0ng -- and hopes John and I will too.

In late August 2003, John and I returned to Hangzhou to reunite with our friends — including my former Chinese coworker Jane.

This was the same “almost vegetarian,” sprightly young twentysomething with a zen chime ringtone, and a grin that could breath even a little humor and grace into the ultra-serious “technical room,” where the two of us used to work. Jane even worked her own hours, and wore edgy outfits, defying the usual “good-girl” pastels most Chinese women wore. Jane reminded me that, even in China, there are girls who just want to have fun — their way. My inner feminist adored her.

If only this were the same Jane I’d known. That day, she served up Hangzhou-style, stir-fried veggies — and a surprise helping of F@lun G0ng. Continue reading “Chapter 74: F@lun G0ne”

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Chapter 73: Finding Friends in Unfriendly Shanghai

Typing on a black computer keyboard — When my computer needed fixing in Shanghai, I discovered a helpful -- and friendly -- face from the most unlikely person: a computer-chat addicted, shy Shanghai college kid.

In the city of Shanghai, undulating with more than 17 million people, you still can feel lonely. After being here for over five months, I still didn’t feel like I had the same reliable, warm friendships that I remembered from Hangzhou. I had the company of John, my Chinese boyfriend, but I wanted other people, new friends, to share my life with. Some say that’s the flavor of Shanghai — a snobbish city that brands any non-Shanghainese as outsiders.

But not everyone in Shanghai snubbed John and I, as we discovered a kindly soul in the son of our downstairs neighbors, born and raised in Shanghai.

We didn’t know much about this young man, at first. He spent his evenings on the computer, using a popular Chinese chat application called QQ — the arrhythmic chirp like a vital signs monitor, reminding us, begrudgingly, that he was still around. If anything, it was an annoying reminder. He often stayed up late, blaring the television downstairs and disturbing our sleep.

But then we discovered another disturbance — internet spam. Continue reading “Chapter 73: Finding Friends in Unfriendly Shanghai”

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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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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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Chapter 70: Tested Under the Shanghai Heat

oriental pearl tower — Under the fierce July heat in Shanghai, I was tested when the neighborhood filled with the din of a city works project.

Shanghai’s July heat has a way of testing you. Barely a month ago, you were still in that delightful Shanghai Spring — with its warm breezes perfumed in osmanthus and peach blossoms. But suddenly, the romance is over, and you discover you’re locked in a pressurized sauna. You almost have to part the humid-heavy air aside as you walk down the streets, now weighed down with moisture beading all over your face and body. It’s a public penance, where everyone must pay for those golden Springs and Autumns with molten, unbearable summers.

As July began to strangle Shanghai in searing heat and humidity, I felt strangled once again in my neighborhood as yet another source of noise and confusion marched through our lane. Continue reading “Chapter 70: Tested Under the Shanghai Heat”

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Chapter 69: The Bad Luck Kittens

Newborn kitten in someone's hands — Someone in Shanghai dumped newborn kittens into a garbage can near my office -- all over superstition. I wonder when luck was more important than life.

Black kittens with soft white paws don’t belong in the garbage can. But that’s where they were, carelessly tossed into a dumpster near my office in Shanghai. Only days old, these tiny, partially blind bundles of fur were saved by what nature gave them — plaintive mewing that drew the attention of a cleaning attendant. Somehow, the cleaning attendants must have known that a couple of the trade show girls in our company had a soft spot for animals — because there they were, in front of the womens bathroom on my floor, trying to nurse them back to health with eye-dropper filled with milk.

I’ve raised kittens all my life, and this miniature feline nativity drew me in instantly — but not without drama. Continue reading “Chapter 69: The Bad Luck Kittens”

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Chapter 68: The Soliciting Shanghai Peddlers

three-wheeled bicycle in China piled with junk — Riding a loaded down, rickety, three-wheeled bicycle (like this one), peddlers infiltrated my community, with its "no solicitor" signs posted at every gate.

“No soliciting.”

These words, written in black Chinese characters on a rusting white sign hung at each gate into my new community — a traditional Long Tang — read more like a dare than a warning. The one guard station, at the southern gate, stood empty more than half the time. The other two gates never locked, even though each one had a rusty red loop that could have easily held a lock of some kind — but it never did. Nothing about the setup suggested security, or even the attempt to stop solicitors. It might as well been a prison with all of its doors open, with a sign hanging at the door that said “no escaping.”

John and I escaped here, to Luwan District, after post-midnight garbage runs disturbed our sleep night after night. The nighttime here lay as dark and still as the streets, with their garage-door-like storefronts shuttered tight, the only sound a stray taxi here or a drunkard hobbling there. It was the night we hoped for, after a wrenching departure from our old apartment. “It’s very quiet here,” the real estate agent assured John with nodding confidence. For once, the agent was right.

But he forgot to tell John about one thing — the days and, especially, the daytime peddlers, crooning their wares as they bicycled in and out of the lanes of our community. Continue reading “Chapter 68: The Soliciting Shanghai Peddlers”

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Ask the Yangxifu: Feeling Big in Little China

Woman looking in a mirror, unsatisfied with herself. — A Western woman with a normal body size plans to move to China with her Chinese boyfriend, but worries about her body image around thinner Asian women. How can she cope when she moves to China?

Feeling Big asks:

Me and my chinese boyfriend have been dating over a year. When I first met him, I never considered him “date worthy” simply because he was barely as tall as me. However, he was able to win me over. We are planning to move to China as soon as I am finished with my schooling, but I have a little problem which I have voiced a few times to him. I am afraid that I will be huge in China.

Unless you were going by model standards, no one in the States could call me fat and I am barely over the average height for women–which allows me to feel fairly short most of the time. Yet, whenever I am with Asian women, I cannot help but compare myself to them. They are just so tiny! Honestly, I do not see how my boyfriend could possibly be attracted to me when I stand next to them because I am occasionally twice their size! In addition, I am generally as tall as most men and about as fat as them too.

I am wondering if you have any advice for this body issue that I am having. I am somewhat afraid that upon getting to China that I will be overwhelmed by an ideal body shape and size that is simply impossible for me to attain.

Thank you so much for your attention and advice! Your blog is simply inspiring and has often filled me with hope. Continue reading “Ask the Yangxifu: Feeling Big in Little China”

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Chapter 56: Missing the Flavor of Hangzhou in Shanghai

Shanghai Oil Noodles — Even as I found so much to love in Shanghai, I still yearned for the flavors of the Hangzhou I once knew. (photo by HanWei, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

I moved to a district in Shanghai called Changning, which means “long peace.” After losing my job and even overstaying my visa in Hangzhou, living in Changning was like finding peace in my life. I had a promising new job as a copywriter in a multinational company named one of the Forbes’ 200 best small companies in the world. I resided in a quiet community, with evergreens, bushes, manicured lawns, weathered four-story, concrete apartment buildings and plenty of sunshine. Every morning, a fleet of modern — and mostly empty — air-conditioned buses could taxi me all the way to my new downtown office.

Most of all, I had John, my Chinese boyfriend, with me, everyday. And perhaps that was the most important difference between Hangzhou and Shanghai — now John was no longer an occasional weekend visitor, but, by unspoken agreement, my live-in partner. He turned Shanghai into something deceptively familiar, as if my new home was simply a Shanghai version of the Hangzhou neighborhood I once knew.

But this was a new neighborhood and a new city — with a new culinary landscape we didn’t understand. Continue reading “Chapter 56: Missing the Flavor of Hangzhou in Shanghai”

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Chapter 52: Bad Luck or Blessings?

The Taoist yin-yang symbol — As I grappled with the uncertainty of finding a new job, and wondering where to live in China, I began to realize that my bad luck just might be a blessing after all.

There once was a Taoist man, named Saiweng, who lost his horse. While his neighbors thought it a great misfortune, Saiweng’s father said “I don’t know.” Later, the horse returned with a herd of the finest wild horses. The neighbors called this a blessing, but Saiweng’s father said “I don’t know.” One day, Saiweng decided to ride one of the new horses, but he fell off and broke his leg. The neighbors declared this tragic, and Saiweng’s father still said, yet again, “I don’t know.” Later, their region declared war, because of the invasion of barbarian tribes. While all able-bodied men had to take up arms and fight, Saiweng, with his crippled leg, could stay at home.

As the days in February 2003 passed, I slowly lost my hopes for staying in Hangzhou. Continue reading “Chapter 52: Bad Luck or Blessings?”

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