Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf

I have latey been fascinated by a popular cartoon in China. Its title is translated in English as "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf." The animated adventures are aimed at children, who watch as a beret-wearing grey wolf schemes to capture a colony of young goats at the orders of his overbearing, crown-capped wife. What always follows is a set of hiliarious circumstances in which the goats foil the wolf's plans, taking many of the ideas directly from the playbook which the Road Runner used against Wile E. Coyote in the West. The poor wolf always ends up with cuts, bruises, and a damaged ego. To make matter worse, his angry wife usually clobbers him on the head with a frying pan as punishment for his failure.

Anyone from the West who watches this cartoon will immediately see similarities with the Smurfs. The goat leader is a teenage boy called "Pleasant." There is another goat who is a fitness freak, a pretty girl goat sometimes named "Betty" in English, and a gluttonous goat dubbed "Fatty." An older, wise goat resembling Albert Einstein plays the Papa Smurf role. The formulaic plot puts the goats briefly in harm's way thanks to the wolf's nefarious plans, but a glitch always allows the goats to go free and leaves the wolf with a wife-induced knock on his noggin. As you might realize by now, I've watched this cartoon series much too often, many times accompanied by a few pints of chilled beer.

"Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf" is at the center of a Disney-esqe merchandising bonanza. Kids all across China can buy a vast assortment of things emblazoned with the characters' image: balloons, lunchboxes, stuffed animals, and all kinds of toys. Some Westerners who bemoan the advancement of modern, materialistic China are troubled by this fact. I am more troubled by the idea that many women believe the wolf character represents "the perfect husband, because he does what his wife asks and never complains." Not even while suffering the most heinous serial acts of domestic violence ever seen on Chinese television.

But I'm pretty sure that after consuming enough Tsingdao brew, even I would accept being whacked in the head with a frying pan if my wolf-wife was cute enough.

Apology

Something went wrong at work.

It was my fault, but one of my co-workers was convinced that she was in line to take the blame. After all, no one at the company would suggest a foreigner on the staff could be responsible for causing trouble. They would just call-out the Chinese who was standing nearest to the foreigner and make that person suffer. My co-worker was so consumed by anger at this thought that she screamed and yelled at me for two solid minutes, and had to finally be restrained by a small, kindly, older woman in the office. I felt really bad about it. The scene was worse than a walk-off blind date disaster.

I said I would take responsiblity, no problem. But my apoplectic colleague wasn't hearing it. "You don't understand," she pouted. "I must go to the boss and apologize. I will lose face. I could lose my job."

The concept of face is well-known in Eastern social circles. It's been passed down through the centuries in places like Japan, Korea, and China. One must show he or she is properly apologetic for wrongdoing, or the apology is not considered genuine. Appearance and opinion are very important here, just like in an American middle school. This idea creates significant consequences for any kind of personal interaction in the society.

"To risk losing face is unacceptable," I was told. "Everyone knows this."

In the West, I explained, there is no apology in the workplace. There simply isn't time. You admit to the problem, you fix it, you resolve to make sure it never happens again, and then you get on with the work. The End.

With all of the worry and concern over keeping and losing face in China, I sometimes wonder how anything gets done. I decided to keep the concept in mind and avoid any more mistakes. But I am also going to keep that little old lady around, just in case.

Pushing The Button Does Not Close The Elevator Door Faster

Back at my former, isolated, iron-fenced, prison-yarded, hostile-to-foreigners-of-all-nationalities apartment compound, the building where I lived suffered a power outage. The elevators did not work. I had just arrived home from my job and saw residents standing around outside. I'd long-before realized that communication was impossible, so I didn't try to ask anyone what was going on. I just walked inside and pushed the "up" button for the elevator and it didn't even light up. No problem. I began walking the stairs...to my apartment on the 15th floor.

By the time I reached the 3rd floor, the immediate meaning of the number "15" began to sink in. But just when I'd mentally settled-in for a long, exhausting slog up the steps, I suddenly noticed I had already climbed to the 14th floor, and moments later, I arrived at my apartment door. It was as if I'd skipped a couple of floors altogether, which, indeed was exactly what happened.

Beijing is a city of thousands of high rise buildings, and among the more unusual things at some of them is that there is no 4th or 13th floor. It is all due to the legendary Chinese attention to superstition. The number "4," or any number that includes a "4," is considered bad luck, because "4" is similar to the sound for the Chinese character representing "death." (As for 13, apparently it is internationally, even universally, infamous. If you're tagged with a 13, you can't get away with anything, not even in outer space.)

But that fact does not come close to explaining the habit which Beijingers have of pushing the "door close" button on the elevator. From office ladies to maintenance workers, everyone seems convinced that hitting this magic button makes the elevator door close faster, and starts the ride quicker.

I know better. I regularly ignore the "door close" button whenever I step into an elevator. I just punch the button for my floor and get ready to ride. Sometimes I like to annoy the other riders by taking up position directly in front of the panel so no one else can get to the button, thus causing the perceived, interminable, 1.225-second wait before the door shuts and the elevator leaps into action. It is just my way of trying to make it clear: Pushing the Button Does Not Close the Elevator Door Any Faster. I can't believe anyone on the elevator is in such a hurry that they believe the time it takes for the door to close will make any real difference in their journey. Maybe they don't think the door will close at all.

Another high-rise behavior I like is how people misinterpret the "down" button in the lobby. Some impatient riders, unfamiliar with the way an elevator works, notice the car is stopped on an upper floor. So they push the "down" button, to bring the elevator "down." Then they climb aboard the elevator and get angry when it continues to go down to the basement, when they expected it to go up to their desired floor instead.

Yes, it wastes a few minutes during my day, but it's still amusing to watch. And I need to laugh.

What I really want to do is mechanically engineer an elevator in Beijing which automatically rises from the lobby straight to the 4th floor when someone hits the "door-close" button. It's a fair bet, then, that "emergency stop" will be a popular option.