Beijing time 7:45 am, Thursday, May 21st. Tucson time 4:35 pm, Thursday, May 20th 2010
I usually never get the chance to communicate with other passengers on planes. International flights were exceptionally terrible, with myself squeezed dead center around both my parents. The good thing was, in years past, my parents attempted to roll me into all sorts of positions across their laps or beneath their legs so that I could almost lie flat. I was never able to sleep sitting up, and still can’t. This was the first time I had boarded a plane alone, without my friends or family. When I navigated to my seat, C41, in the aisle, the first thing I noticed about my two companions was that they were kind of large. I groaned mentally, wondering why the two largest people on board were squeezed next to me. I shoved my backpack into the space under the seat and prepared for a long, silent flight of leaning to the right…away from the excess of human flesh on the left.
I soon noticed, however, that the man and the woman beside me were somehow interacting. The man was showing the woman sitting by the window something on his phone. He was selecting from an alphabet; I later realized it was a dictionary. After a few minutes, the man next to me asked, “you speak English?” “Yes,” I replied. “We finally have an interpreter!” the woman exclaimed. I realized they had been attempting to talk, but neither could really understand the other.
The man, Mr. Liu, was from Jinan, one of the locations I will be visiting on this trip. He had been in Houston for a week on business. We talked for a very long time after the period of translation with Linda, the American woman in the window seat. Mr. Liu could not get over the fact that Linda was nearly 70 years old and, despite being slightly overweight, looked very healthy. It was something about her that we would call “zhuang” or strong. Mr. Liu told me that elderly Chinese could not hope to compare to their American counterparts. One of his clients was 80 years old, swam regularly 3 times a week, and was still working. I told him that my Chinese professor was 71 and still worked as well, but researchers and professors tended to work beyond the retirement age. Other Americans might work far into old age as well, but that had more to do with social security getting pushed back and lack of retirement funds. Many Chinese will retire before 50, even in their 40s, he said. This is because there are more young people in China than in America. He told me that even the demographics of the airline stewardesses followed this trend. Indeed, all the ladies on the flight were 40-60 years old; two were Asian, but the rest were Caucasian. All airline stewardesses in China are very young. The people in their 40s must back down to let the younger generation work on their posts, because there are too many people looking for jobs. I wonder now how early retirement affects the health of the elderly. Did working longer give a sense of purpose in life, or wear people out?
Mr. Liu also pointed out that the discrepancy between Chinese and American elderly lay simply in care for oneself, and how much money was spent on enjoyment. Americans were good at “xiang shou,” or enjoying life, which made them healthier. Chinese would forever be saving money, for emergencies, and for their children. We talked a bit about spending habits; I told him I believe most Americans live in credit card debt, but Chinese have tangible sums of money stowed away somewhere.
Mr. Liu himself was nearly 60. He had a son who was 22. He asked Linda if she had any children, and she said her son was 39 but passed away 4 years ago. I didn’t quite know what to say to that; obviously Mr. Liu and I did not inquire further, but Mr. Liu talked a bit about his son. He wanted his son to start managing his company soon, but his son did not speak English well at all. We saw that the TVs were playing the Discovery Channel. They were explaining the construction of a football stadium. He became excited and said, my company makes the equipment for that. I spent a while trying to decipher exactly what product his company manufactured, until he took out his business card and showed me a picture. It was some kind of power tool that functioned as an electrical wrench. They used it to put in and take out large “nails” that connected steel supports. Judging from the fact that he owned a BMW that had cost as much as a small American house, he was pretty successful. Everything imported or name brand was astronomically inflated in China. They were actually cheaper in America. Housing in the large cities, like Beijing and Shanghai, had also multiplied over the past years. My own uncle’s house that I am staying in right now went from 1 million to 6 million RMB. Mr. Liu said he planned to buy some cheap, large houses in Houston, because everything in China was tiny and expensive. He lamented about the inequality between China and America: in America, things are cheaper and better, but “ren gong” or work is more expensive. In China, things are more expensive, but work is super cheap. Also, blue collar work paid the highest in China; technical degrees could pay better than university degrees. In America, however, white collar work and the university degrees dominate the economy.
I felt my conversation with Mr. Liu was the most informative I’d had about China in years. It was a good start to the trip. With my relatives, the main thing I can do is become readjusted to Chinese food. I quickly realized I had eaten too much college cafeteria and restaurant food these past two years when I was shocked at the sharp tastes in my grandmother’s cooking. Radish with sweet and sharp brown sauce, cake that tasted too sweet for cake, xiang chun, a plant my mother had unsuccessfully attempted to smuggle back to the US two years back—she had actually passed all customs with the little cup of dirt but the seedling did not survive the two day journey inside her purse. Vinegar pickled garlic was crispy and sickly sweet. I avoided the rest of the pickled vegetables. I had forgotten that real Chinese cooking was so strong! The next night we went out to eat hotpot. The ingredients rotated around the entire room, and we picked out whatever raw items we wanted and dropped them into the boiling water. It was like amateur cooking...perhaps some good practice for me. I could not identify most of the sauces available for dipping, and most of the time I spent guessing what was rotating past me on the conveyer belt. There were meat dumplings, nappa cabbage, Chinese meatballs, winter melon, mushrooms, tofu slices, sticky cake, tomatoes, eggs, potatoes, noodles, and much more. The lamb slices cooked almost instantaneously as they were dipped into the water. It was quite a fun experience, but by the end my seafood sauce had become so diluted I my food no longer had much taste. My relatives have all said I am too thin…as per usual…I am very worried I will gain 5 or 10 pounds at the end of this trip as a result of all the force feeding. I have a feeling many of my entries will be food themed. A lot of Chinese now are getting slightly round as well, due to the culture driven by food.
