My Year in Beijing

Three events have led to the startling revelation that I need to post a blog asap for my Western audience.  The Chinese audience isn't privy to blogger.com, nor to Twitter or Facebook and all the glitz of perfectly open Western media. First event, Boxilai's ousting as Chongqing Communist Party Secretary. Second event, the shutting down of China's Twitter (Weibo) comments as an expression of military and government might, and third, the Titantic obsession.

Actually, I just felt like posting for the heck of it. My China obsession began in college when I was a student of International Relations. Some assigned classes included Eastern Relgions, Chinese Political Economy, Chinese History from Mongul Empire until Mao, etc. These classses coupled with a part-time job as a waitress as a Chinese-owned vegan restaurant inspired an unquenching desire to go abroad and study Chinese language. My major required a foreign language, and while it was popular to summer in Prague or Paris, I decided I was going all the way to China. our college had a partnership with Fudan University, and from what I had read in Chinese Political Economy, ever since the reformist period began in China in 1978, while China's economy was open to foreign investment and hosted a wealth of modernizing cities, the West of China still remained fragmented. I wanted to go there and work. I would become an English teacher.

I was 22 at that time, a fresh college graduate, and I could already speak and type conversational Chinese (I will not boast that I could write Chinese although, sure, I can copy characters with agility an easy). Most importantly, I could talk on QQ to any Chinese friends I made, and I spent my freshly graduated summer doing just so. I found a school in the middle of no where, Suining, Sichuan. I wanted to find a college because, who wants to teach kids, and I wanted to find a school that would provide me with accomodation, visa, a round-trip flight, and a decent salary. Yes, Yes, Yes and Yes. I took off, and from my previous posts, you can see what kind of lonely life I lived as a lone Westerner in this small city. Here in Beijing, I hear legends of these type of foreigners - the ones with good Chinese and who are starting a business or doing something else in Beijing most always began their careers in middle-of-nowhere China where they were the star of the town. And so it began, in Suining, I was invited to dinners with city officials and mayors and famous painters who drew scrolls and bamboo and poetry and famous calligraphy for me, and I never paid for my own hotpot. I was invited to KTV 3 times a week and the other nights I usually spent feasting on spicy Sichuan dishes and drinking Baijiu. Since being in Beijing, I have not touched Baijiu.

I don't know what is it is about not having gone home yet. Maybe it's the desire to completely master the language and seek out a balance where a Western lifestyle can fit in perfectly with a Chinese lifestyle, but such a balance does not exists. In most cases of foreigners staying in China, they will strive very hard to fit in with Chinese crowds and never will. Dashan is just a national hero and no one treats hims him like a normal figure. They want to make a statue that praises him for learening perfect Chinese and for trying to bridge cultural gaps. Big fucking deal - anyone wants to do that. If I could have afforded it, I would have continued learning Chinese all the way through Fudan or Peking, where ever, but my disposition is rather shy, and the Chinese aren't likely to give me pressure to learn their language. On the other hand, pressure to learn English is rampant across the globe. Learning Chinese is just a pat on the back, and a foreigner is praised for his or her English abilities and happy and hardworking disposition.

Being in Beijing is tiresome and so is the fact that I have not been able to find a stable relationship or job that I like. Such struggles do not exist in the West. I did hear of a French girl who came here at 18 and now speaks perfect Chinese. At first she worked for some General doing illegal activities, and then maybe she worked in a brothel, and now she owns two houses in central Beijing, all paid for by a famous Chinese artist who is already married. What a very strange dream-like story. As for a normal relationship with a Chinese guy...western standards are for men to be forthright and confident, strong, hygenic and moral, and just strong figures. I haven't seen these qualities in any of the seemingly great Chinese men I have met. They're all too weak and servile and lacking of confidence to actually pursue me. I do give that Western women only like Chinese men who are exactly like Western guys!

That is all for now.