I Have A (Chinese) Name

In my never-ceasing attempts to learn Mandarin in my spare time, I decided to watch and listen to sports highlights on Chinese TV stations. All of the pictures were packaged and sequenced exactly the same as in the U. S. and other countries, and the presenter enthusiastically summarized the action on the screen. Except I noticed one thing. I didn't hear the presenter say any of the names of the athletes. It was all run-together-Mandarin as-usual to my untrained ear. And these were highlights from NBA basketball, the sport that the Chinese are supposedly crazy about. At no time did I hear the names of any the players on the screen: not Carmelo Anthony, not Paul Pierce, not Kevin Garnett, not Tim Duncan, not even celebrated superstar LeBron James.


I asked one of my co-workers about what I watched. "All of the sports stars are recognized only by their Chinese names," he said. "Everyone knows this."


Now I know that this should not have surprised me at all, but I was nonetheless shocked and amazed. In South Africa, no one makes up a different name for the Yankees' Derek Jeter. There's no made-up moniker for Shaquille O'Neal in Germany. Even the French call NFL quarterback Peyton Manning, "Peyton Manning." They don't call him "Le Mannion des Peyton" or something stupid like that. But the Chinese apparently find it way too tough to say anyone's name in anything but Mandarin. Unless it's Kobe Bryant, who is known simply as "Ko-bay", likely because his first name naturally fits into 2 familiar Chinese characters.


Still, it's hard for me to understand. I mean, we Americans didn't start calling Yao Ming anything different when he joined the NBA. The worst we did to fellow Chinese hoops hero Yi Jianlian was shorten his name to two letters -"Yi" - and stuck it to the back of his jersey.


The implications for talking to someone in China about sports or popular culture are huge. If I want to talk to a Chinese person about legendary painter Picasso, it's "who?" Singer Mariah Carey: "Eh?" Even one of their own, actor Jackie Chan, is known by an entirely different name. I need to point to his picture before people get it. "See, it's Jackie Chan! Jackie CHAN! JACK-IE CHANNN!"


Forget it. And don't fall into the bad habit of thinking that raising the volume or pitch of your voice helps; it doesn't.


Movie titles? Never mind. The title of the recent Will Smith movie "Hancock" is referred-to as something like "flying black superhero man with sunglasses." Simply calling it "Hancock" would be too easy.


"Enter The Dragon"? You know, Bruce Lee? ("BRUCE LEE?") Nope. But if I spoke about the most famous movie starring Li Xiaolong, then we're going somewhere.


I can't believe it.


I finally asked someone what my Chinese name would be, if I could choose it. To my surprise, I discovered I already have one. It's even written on my Foreign Experts Certificate, in Chinese characters, "An Dong Ni." That is apparently the closest anyone could get to saying my given name in Mandarin. I still don't know how to say it myself, nor which tones you're supposed to use. With my luck in China, it can probably be misinterpreted to mean "dung of a perverted sheep-owning peasant." When I hear raucous laughter the next time I introduce myself, then I'll know.

Diet Coke

Fast on the heels of my surprisingly-favorable review of McDonald's in China, I now deliver a defense of another sinister American import, Coca-Cola. I am a huge fan and big consumer of Diet Coke, and I am so happy I can drink it from one side of China to the other. Quaffing other cola products are like drinking liquid cinder blocks compared to Diet Coke, a.k.a. Coca-Cola Light, a.k.a. jian yi kele (literally, no-sugar Cola). So, for those knuckleheads who enjoy the full-calorie, full-sugar alternative, you can take your billions of cases of original Coke or Pepsi and resume building the Great Wall. The rest of us will enjoy our low-calorie carbonated fix.

Diet drink marketing in China has been slow, mostly due to some old-world thinking. It seems many people in undevevloped countries associate the English word "diet" with women who want to lose weight. Consuming a "diet" drink is still seen to be un-manly here. Hence, such drinks are labeled "light" drinks. I've seen Coca-Cola Light, Pepsi Light, even Dr. Pepper Light on the shelves in China. It is almost like the struggle to market light beer in the U. S. 30 years ago. It's interesting to note, too, that Coke Zero is a Chinese curiosity among sodas, while its market share is marginal in the U. S. and Europe.

So it's a mixed bag regarding low-calorie sodas in Beijing. It may be comforting for the culture snobs to know that a lot of Chinese do not consider Coca-Cola products to be healthy at all. Tea is, has been, and always will be the drink of choice in China. After all, many TV commercials air featuring fit, healthy young people singing songs and enjoying tea at the beach, so it must be good for you, right?

Beijing Police

I survived a recent brush with the law here in Beijing. I'd agreed to the 1 year deal to stay at my current job last December, but my employer failed to tell me I had to renew my work and residency papers. It turned out I was living in China and working illegally for 22 days. I had to pay an 800 U.S. dollar fine, AND I had to spend a day at a police station, which really concerned me. I expected detention, or forced labor, or waterboarding, at least.


POLICE OFFICER: Let me take a moment to explain the penalties. Once we find you guilty, we will sentence you to one day of hard labor.

ME: Wait a second! WHAT? What do you mean 'hard labor?'

OFFICER: You will be ordered to report to work, joining the farmers and other migrants who are building that Beijing skyscraper across the street. You will continue to lift bricks and mortar, weld metal, and balance on bamboo scaffolding until you either run out of phlegm-packed spit or fall to your death, whichever comes first.

ME: Don't you have something less taxing, like probation? You know, if you catch me breaking the law again, I get deported to the U. S., where I can join the first home construction project once the economy begins moving again?

OFFICER: We do not have this probation of which you speak. Everybody knows this.

ME: How about Double Secret Probation? Does anybody know about that?

OFFICER: You are lucky the farmers bought all of the plastic buckets or you would be severely waterboarded already.


My employer promised to send a Chinese legal expert to sit with me, but dispatched a cute office-worker girl to keep me company instead. This wasn't half bad; it made the threat of waterboarding seem a lot easier to handle.

It was a nervous, disturbing time, with no one bothering to translate for me what was going to happen next. I had to sign some papers that explained my guilt and my "attitude toward the offenses." It ended up being nothing worse than paying for parking tickets, and the company, to its credit, provided all the cash on the spot. I suppose I now have a criminal record in China, which should give me some serious street cred, and make me all the more irresistible to the cute Mainland babes who are already crushing on Obama.

Squat Toilet

I've finally come to review something which I find so vile, revolting, and disgusting that I cannot even bring myself to post a photograph of it on this blog. All of you readers who have lived in Beijing or are currently residing here know where I'm going with this. For those of you who somehow missed the title at the top of the entry, I am talking about the Squat Toilet.

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There are some things that just cannot be excused or explained by cultural differences, and the Squat Toilet is at the top of the list in Beijing. In China, and indeed, in much of Asia, the water closet throne has no seat. You must simply balance, brace yourself, or mysteriously levitate above a hole in the ground, and drop your load.

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This little detail of life in China somehow escaped the thoughts of every single person who advised me about moving here. An "oh, by the way, if you need to go #2, you'll need to balance your butt above a hole in the ground with your pants around your ankles" would have been appreciated. And where was this important aspect of contemporary Asia documented during the run-up to the Olympic Games? Why didn't any of the umpteen local reporters, much less national network anchors, do a profile on how one of the basic necessities of everyday life calls for an uncomfortable compromise for most Westerners?

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The Chinese will tell you they invented paper and the means to write on it. They invented fireworks. They may have even invented the first shoulder-mounted rocket-propelled-grenade launcher. So my complaint can be summed up thusly: "After more than 5,000 years of civilized history, is this all you could come up with for depositing human waste? A hole in the ground?"

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I can recall the first time I encountered the horror of the Squat Toilet. It was at my workplace, in a public bathroom on my floor in the office building. It seemed familiar enough, a metal door on some hinges, next to a typical urinal. It wasn't the cleanest restroom in the world, but I understand how accuracy is sometimes the first casualty When Nature Calls. When I pushed the door open and beheld the sight of the Squat Toilet, all I could think was, "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?" Some quaint porcelain plating and a foot-pedal flush system was all that separated it from the Coal Miner's Daughter's family outhouse in Appalachia. What was going on behind the next door down the hall? The Chinese Chainsaw Massacre?

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And this was on the eighth floor of a 25-story office tower. As I stood in the doorway, I could only imagine thirteen more levels of fecal matter dropping straight down, burning its way from one hole in the floor to the next, just like the acidic blood from "Alien." I finally turned away and began to quickly consider alternatives to my situation. I gave up on the entire building almost immediately, and went to the 4-star hotel down the street. At least they had the proper equipment to get the job done.

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Later, I discovered that the Squat Toilet is, perhaps, a result of necessity. Every now and then, you'll see a small public toilet building along a city street, and I assure you, each one has all of the fly-swatting charm of a rustic roadside rest stop along a blue highway in Arkansas. But, when you live in a city of 12-to-15 million people, dignity isn't always going to be your top concern. And, if you grew up in most parts of China, this is the way you were potty-trained: learning to rest your weight on your heels, wedging-open your butt crack, and moving the bowels until empty.

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Now the real scary thing...as if what I've already described is not scary enough...is foreigner families are actually teaching their kids to adapt to this crude custom. One woman writing on a community website says she is forcing her 3 year-old to learn to squat, because, "after all, we live in China, and we travel a lot, so the sooner our kids learn how to use squat toilets, the better!"

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Excuse the phrase, but HOLY CRAP, LADY! China has many nice hotels, nice schools, and nice homes, all with toilet seats. And they are clean, too. Unless you are traveling to some primitive grassland wilderness where no 3 year-old child needs to be, anyway, you can find a less-traumatizing choice.

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True, the astronauts aboard the International Space Station are having trouble with a workable solution, but at least they're trying. In zero gravity, I might add.

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I admit I don't understand everything about Chinese culture. However, I can tell you this; every man, woman, and child needs to sit down, not squat, to pinch a loaf. This isn't rocket science.

Feng Shui

I know some people in the U. S. who are devotees of Feng Shui, the new-age application of balance in one's life. It goes beyond having good luck or bad luck. It is the literal measure of "qi", or the flow of energy, in a particular space. The Chinese have followed the basic principles of Feng Shui for thousands of years. Westerners only caught onto the tradition recently while deciding how to re-arrange their living room furniture.


Non-Chinese railroad-builders earned the wrath of the locals in the 20th century by building tracks in violation of Feng Shui principles. Although the Chinese were angered, I suppose there were few instances of locomotives suddenly jumping off the tracks without explaination. Yet the tradition, or superstition, remains.


I joined three of my Chinese co-workers for a meal at a restaurant. The host guided us to our seats at a table in the middle of the room. After ordering our meals, my co-workers began speaking amongst themselves in Mandarin, and suddenly got up from their chairs. They moved to another table, leaving me sitting alone. I finally stood up and followed them, expecting some kind of explaination to come my way in English. Nothing. So, after a few minutes at the new table, I said, "what was that all about? Why did we move?" "That table had bad Feng Shui," one of my colleagues explained. I was pissed. "So, what?" I said, "You were going to make me sit there by myself? What was I supposed to do, walk out of the place so I could get hit by a bus?"


The response was classic Chinese. "But everyone knows Feng Shui," the co-worker said. "Everyone."

Pandas Are People, Too

You don't need to travel all the way to China to discover that giant pandas are awesome. But you need to be here to experience to depth of affection that the Chinese have for these gentle creatures. Giant pandas have been fighting extinction for more than 30 years, and the mainland Chinese have not only kept the species going, but they have managed to turn it into a symbol of peace and goodwill among nations. It's a fact that giant pandas have replaced the ping pong table as the key instrument of Chinese international diplomacy. Once the Chinese offer to send a pair of cute panda to mend fences or establish a new relationship with another country, resistance is futile.

The panda-as-superstars mania is so unusual that it defies logic. I think panda-lovers would put shirts, pants and hats on the animals if they were allowed to. There is one famous case in which a college student climbed a fence in a Chinese zoo and tried to hug one of the pandas. The guy ended up in the hospital, suffering from multiple panda bites. "Yang Yang was so cute, and I just wanted to cuddle him," the student reportedly explained, foolishly brainwashed into thinking that pandas are people, too.

But the real problem is not the alleged propaganda or occasional violence, it is the panda lifestyle of hedonism and laziness. They are not expected to do anything all day, except look cute and eat bamboo leaves. Sort of like supermodels. There's also the aspect of the panda philosophy of breeding. Since the goal at their Sichuan home was to produce more pandas, the male and female are conditioned to take time out from the bamboo-chewing at the drop of a hat and just do-what-comes-naturally. And admit it, that's the part of the supermodel lifestyle which we really want to see.

McDonald's

Whenever you find yourself in a strange location, nothing is more welcome than a familiar face.


The much-maligned Golden Arches serve that purpose for Westerners all over the Far East. And all of you culture-addicted, high-minded idiots who turn-up your noses at the sight of Starbucks, KFCs, Pizza Huts, and McDonalds, just get over yourselves.


"With all the great Chinese food to choose from, why would you want to go to McDonald's?" Um, because all Chinese food isn't that great, and you can rely on Mickey D's to deliver each and every time.


The facts are these: 1. McDonalds' plot for world domination is already more than 25 years old, so if you haven't accepted it yet, it's time you got started. 2. The Chinese like McDonald's; they think it's great. If they didn't, there would not be one on every other block in Beijing. 3. Millions of Chinese eat at McDonald's every day. So, as you international snobs keep telling me, when in Rome...put your stupid pretensions aside and enjoy the goodness that is juicy burgers, delicious fries, and a thick shake. 4. Most Chinese who do eat McDonald's food enjoy other stuff, too, like Chinese food. So don't lecture me about how opening a McDonald's in the neighborhood will lead to a health threat akin to radiation sickness, because it just isn't true. 5. The quality of McDonald's food in China is, in all likelihood, far better than that which is served in the United States. Period.


"Oh, the McDonald's fast-food invasion is sending the native culture rocketing down the toilet!" Give me a break. The restaurants are always clean, the workers are always friendly, and the crew nearly always gets your order right, given that you place your order in perfect Mandarin. Bottom line: Chinese culture has managed to last 5000 years. I'm sure it can survive a few ounces of special sauce.