A man walks up to you and your friends, says “Hello,” looks away from you, but still stands right next to you. You quickly look around for his friend’s camera taking an opportunistic shot, but you can’t find it. The guy is standing next to you just for the hell of it. “This is weird,” your friend says. “No,” you reply. “This is China.”
So many moments occur on a daily basis here that are distinctly Chinese. My Chinese roommate asked me to explain what I meant by “distinctly Chinese.” It’s something that is impossible to explain to someone who grew up here, and almost impossible to explain to someone who’s never visited. But I will do my best.
The following are moments I’ve experienced in snapshot form:
- Old men with shirts half-raised to expose their old man beer bellies
- Choosing a flavor of cracker based on the color of the package and believing the flavor to be cheese-based. Nope, it’s actually seaweed-flavored.
- Going to the dumpling restaurant and when there are not enough seats inside, you sit on stools next to a fold-up table in the back alley. While eating the dumplings, smells of sewer crop up unexpectedly, as well as sightings of old men with their exposed bellies.
- Having a makeup class on a Sunday. That’s right—a Sunday.
- Walking into a shop and realizing it’s actually the beginning of a huge underground market. China really likes its underground markets.
- Eating at the cafeteria—the food is cold and the soda is warm.
- Going to the hair salon, getting my hair cut by a “pretty Asian boy” (according to my ABC aka American-Born Chinese friend, this is a legit demographic). He spends 45 minutes cutting my hair with a perfectionist air, which turns into one of the best haircuts of my life. Cost? 15 kuai—roughly $2.50. I now compare everything I buy in terms of haircuts.
- Going to a celebration where there are too many people. A mass of people is held back by only a few security guards. Elsewhere, a girl tries to rejoin her friends in a now blocked-off area. The stern-faced security guard refuses to let her enter. She cries. 20 minutes later, the crowd next to the girl has grown to 30 people. A higher up official decides to wave them in. The girl rejoins her friends.
- Coming back from the club and eating mooncake—not greasy pizza.
- Two almost-empty jars of peanut butter sit on my desk. Don’t ask me to explain why, but peanut butter is a godsend here in China.
- A friend buys a pretty mirror for 70 kuai, having bargained down from 85 kuai. A few weeks later she sees the same mirror in a different shop being sold for 10 kuai.
- Interviewing a former TBC student in his hutong (Beijing’s original housing) for a film class, the student explains why he came to China—“China is my passion, and I’m really happy about being here.” Right outside, a man passing by hocks up an extremely disgusting-sounding loogie. The student points to the window, “That’s why.”
These are just a few of the moments that have occurred since my arrival, but perhaps now you can start to get the feel for what life is like in China. Whenever my friends and I walk around, we inevitably comes across something that makes one of us stop and ask, “…What?”
To which the other person responds, “This is China.” We accept that as the reason, and move on.
