Chapter 7 The Poor Chinese
Just as the Chinese automatically make stereotypical assumptions when they see me; that I'm American, Rich and Christian, they additionally and subconsciously think of foreigners as being white, with blond hair and blue eyes. Likewise, we whities assume that Chinese are all short, with yellow skin, black hair and brown eyes.
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| My neighbours in Wuhan watching my TV |
In fact, like we foreigners, the Chinese come in various colours of skin, hair and eyes, as well as shapes and sizes. I've met Chinese, who apart from the colour of their face and arms, were far whiter than I; and I've lost all my tan since being in China. China is a country comprised of 56 nationalities and that is reflected in their looks.
I have encountered black Chinese, dark Chinese, yellow Chinese, and white Chinese. While most have black straight hair, it is as common to encounter those with naturally curly hair, as it is to meet people with natural brown or light red hair. Whilst most Chinese have Dark brown to black eyes, many have light brown and hazel to green eyes.
My first impression of male students in SuZhou was: 'My God they are so tall!' Likewise you can encounter whole families of people who would be lucky to reach 5 feet tall. And so it is that despite the stereotypical image we westerners have, not all Chinese are the same, and not all are poor, especially given the economic development that has taken place in China over the last 20 years. (Question: "How do Chinese describe foreigners?" Answer: They can't because all foreigners look alike! - True!)
I wrote a story once about a particular family that I had taken pity on, but as I can't find that story at the moment, I shall, after a providing you a brief story background, relate to you some of the key points of that story.
As a westerner who grew up not only in a subtropical environment but with a habit of taking baths, Hong Hu's cold weather, combined with the limitations that came with my bathroom hot water cistern, drove me crazy. I constantly felt cold. Even when everything ran smoothly (no power or water cuts), about the maximum amount of hot water that could be obtained from the electric hot water cistern only lasted about 3 minutes.
One day I was complaining to Tobias about it. I guess I now have to tell you who Tobias is. Tobias and his girlfriend Eunice ran a women's clothing store in HongHu, although Eunice was originally from Xi'an. One day Tobias was riding his bicycle in town and spotted me. He jumped off his bike, and speaking the best English he could muster, and with some difficulty, insisted that I accompany him to his shop. There I met Eunice who was teaching English in a private school. We fast became good friends, and Tobias went to work concentrating on improving his English. He graduated from Wuhan University as an English Major around 2007 or so.
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| Dormitory Bathroom |
Anyway, one winter's day in 2003, I was telling Tobias that I really missed being able to have a hot bath, and that even the Chinese hotels which sometimes do have them, have such small baths that they are quite unsuitable for me.
At this Tobias informed me that there was in Hong Hu a public bathhouse where one could take a bath, although he stressed that it was a dirty place and that I probably would not like it.
Other than that, he told me that I could use the Bathhouse facilities in the big hotel in the main street, but that it would cost a lot of money and that they would try to get me into bed with one of the girls - for extra money of course.
So eager was I for a hot bath that I got him to take me to the bath house, and he asked the manager if we could look around. This we did - much to the astonishment of the naked locals. Tobias was right of course; the place left a lot to be desired, but the opportunity to sit and soak in a spa or big communal bathtub was all that mattered, and so I became a regular guest at the public bath house.
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| Dormitory Washroom |
One night after I got out of the bath I went and took a shower. Say What? Let me explain. Soap is not used in the communal bath. One should first rinse off before getting into the communal bath and then shower afterward. The bath is to soften your skin in preparation for cleaning it, which you either do yourself in the shower, or for which you pay an attendant money to rip the dead skin off your body using a cloth. The results are astonishing, and once you get over the pain and the embarrassment of lying naked in front of just everybody there, and having the attendant's hand touching and brushing against every crack and crevice of your body, the experience is refreshing. It is simply amazing how much dead skin they can rip off you. I have at times taken the most thorough shower possible at home, then gone to the bath house and had the attendant clean me with my own cloth, and sat amazed at how black that cloth had become.
So as I was saying, I went to the shower room and the only available shower head was beside a boy of about 11 or 12 years of age. He immediately tried talking to me in English, and we spent about 20 minutes standing there talking whilst onlookers tried to get him to ask me specific questions. When we finally left the shower, it turned out that our lockers were beside each other, and so I had opportunity to meet the boy's father.
From that discussion it was arranged that I would give him lessons in my home, and despite telling them that I would accept no payment, the first few times they gave me cartons of cigarettes and fruit. The boy's love of learning was what motivated me to teach him, and given that it was obvious that his family was poor, I disliked taking any form of payment from them.
Losing all track of time (as so often happens for the foreigner), I had scheduled a lesson for him without realising that it fell on Christmas day, and because so many people were inviting me to dine with them on Christmas day, I instead invited everyone to my place for dinner.
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| Poor country house |
I got Tobias to call the boy's family and tell them of the change in plan and asked them to join us, which they did. Subsequently, they extended an invitation to join them for dinner in their 'new' home, and as you can see in the photo provided here, that home was anything but poor.
The house cost one million rmb to build, and was shared by the parents, the grandparents and an uncle and aunt. The family owned a factory which made plastic medicine bottles and pvc piping, and they took us on a tour of it, pointing out in the process that 4 machines in particular had cost about 6 million RMB.
The Bathhouse
In addition to it's many design purposes, the local bathhouse also serves as a community center of sorts, where friends meet and talk. Most of the older homes in Xindi central have either no running water, or no running hot water, and certainly no bathroom as we might think of it. A trip to the bathhouse therefore allows one to luxuriate from time to time, as well as warm the bones, chat with old friends and get thoroughly clean.
It was in the bathhouse that I began to make progress in learning Chinese. Time after time people would ask me questions, and I would try to memorize those questions so that later I could ask one of the boys or a teacher, both what the questions meant and how to answer them. Of course, as one listens to conversation going on around one, one also hears the same words being frequently used, and it was from noticing certain frequently used words, that I discovered the Chinese expressions for certain parts of the male anatomy, and learned that the locals spent a lot of time talking about my build.
Whilst the Chinese can be very moralistic and prudish &/or modest, inside the bathhouse, (indeed even at the local swimming hole) one quickly learns that the Chinese male is in fact quite at home 'au naturel'. It is nothing to see men in the bathhouse sitting around either naked or in underwear by their lockers, smoking cigarettes and lost in discussion, although to be fair, it does take some 'getting used to' having a foreigner see you that way. And the converse is equally true!
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| Dormitory Bedroom |
As a western male, there is only one way to conduct yourself in the bathhouse, and that is to pretend that running around naked in front of a bunch of people is the most natural thing for you in the world. And that, believe you me, is not easy to do when you know that everyone is trying to get a good look at you, and discussing your most private parts with everyone else in the room.
One day as I was heading into the bath room, I stopped to chat with the boss, and whilst doing so, 3 men exited the bath room. Suddenly there was a scream, followed by the exclamation in Chinese: 'Foreigner!' As I look up, there were these guys grasping their family jewels so as not to be exposed to the foreigner. Not to be outdone, I myself screamed 'foreigner', and making full use of both my hands, immediately grabbed and so covered up, my man boobs. That brought the house down, and put the men at ease!
As mentioned earlier, the Chinese do have their own urban legends about the western male, and given the opportunity, they are extremely keen, and devious I might add, in their endeavours to find out if the legends are true. The first time I decided to pay the extra fee and use an individual bath, I chose the one of the two partitioned baths at the far end of the room, about 5 meters from the open showers. Some herd mentality instinct immediately caused all the men in the showers to immediately quit showering, and walking in the opposite direction to the doorway, found it convenient to stand behind my bath as they dried themselves. Definitely disconcerting!
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| Local Customs |
The other side of the coin of course is that Westerners have their own urban legends about Chinese men, and from my own observations, these are generally but not always false. Unlike the Chinese, I, having been attacked as a child shortly after birth, lack some of the original material that God gave me at birth and so when I wash, my ritual is somewhat different to that of most Chinese men.
However, from my observations, I have perceived that the untreated equipment with which men are born must be extremely dirty and hard to clean, for I have noticed that it takes an extremely long time for some Chinese men to clean them.
I have been asked at times if there is any homosexual overtones or activity to be found in the common bathhouse, and apart from one experience, I would have to say there is not, although as mentioned, I have wondered at times about the necessity to spend what seems to me to be an inordinate amount of time cleaning 'that extra bit of flesh'.
I had had the scrub down one night, and then went to shower. Beside the bath is a small alcove containing 3 shower heads, and on the other side, a room with about 16 shower heads. The only shower head free was the one by the door to the dressing room. At the end of the alcove containing three showers, was a middle aged man who, in addition to continually cleaning his equipment, was standing at a 45 degree to the wall and staring at me. When I finished washing, I went past him back to the edge of the bath, and putting down my plastic bag with soap etc, began to apply moisturiser to my skin.
Whilst I was doing that however, I noted that the man had done a 90 degree turn and was now watching me apply moisturizer (and continuing to clean his equipment). As I headed past him to go into the dressing room, he muttered something. I looked at him and said 'What?' and in English he said: "I - gay!" "Yes!" I replied: 'I figured that!' and left the room.
If there was anything I feared at all in the HongHu bathhouse, it was that I would accidentally step out of my plastic sandals, and step in someone's spit or urine. After having noticed that when the need arose I would sometimes leave the bathroom and go to the toilet, the manager finally pointed out to me that it was unnecessary to leave the room, for I could just urinate against the wall. That was when the penny dropped, and I understood why some men would stop and face the wall. As for spitting, it is done simply everywhere in China. As Tobias had warned me, by western standards the bathhouse was a dirty place.
The first draft of this chapter was far more explicit than it now appears; those changes resulting from comments from those to whom I entrusted the first draft. It was considered that such open descriptions of nudity and behaviour were either distasteful or unnecessary. As previously stated, whilst the Chinese are quite moral, within the bathhouse, it can be observed that the Chinese are neither prudish nor bashful.
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| Local residential outhouse |
It must be pointed out that country folk in China are not raised in circumstances that give them a lot of privacy, and even today when you think of the conditions of the students living in dormitories at school where privacy is also lacking, even in the toilet, you must realise that the Chinese are not as concerned as the foreigners, with privacy.
I remember at home one day as I opened the bathroom door, that I saw something on the collar of my shirt, and so stopped to brush it off. There I stood for some number of moments in the open doorway trying to remove whatever it was on my shirt, totally oblivious to the fact that QC was in front of me sitting on the toilet reading a book. When I finally looked up and stepped into the room, I got the shock of my life. As I profusely apologised, he just sat there and smiled at me. From his perspective of course, (sitting on a western toilet) the situation was far less disconcerting that the normal process involved in going to the toilet at school.
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| Local Customs |
I have had one person in China who thought it was disgusting that I go to a communal bathroom, or that I have adopted the 'baser' customs of the Chinese, and while I can understand that from a foreign perspective; that one can always just shower at home, I really do love to soak in a nice hot bath, and additionally think that unless you have learned to live as the common Chinese live (and that is about three quarters of a population of 1.3 billion people) how is it that you can say that you have 'experienced' the cultures and customs of China?
Frankly I think that some foreigners, particularly the ones younger than myself, just grew up prudish. If you yourself are prudish, or if you found this chapter hard to take, then I suggest you pay heed to the titles of the next few chapters and perhaps skip them.
R.P. BenDedek
Email: rpbendedek@hotmail.com
Hardcover Publishing inquiries welcomed!
R.P. BenDedek is the pseudonym of an Australian who has been teaching in China since 2003. He currently lives in Baotou in Inner Mongolia. In addition to contributing to Magic City Morning Star News as a columnist, he also is an assisting Editor for the Newspaper.
Additionally, BenDedek is the author of 'The King's Calendar: The Secret of Qumran' at www.kingscalendar.com
