Post #23

Hello...China?

Yes everyone, we all love Korea, but this blog posting will be about my swashbuckling Chinese adventures, featuring Nick Callos and his lovely girlfriend Ting Ting. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

The insanity begins in Korea, where I found myself sleeping alongside homeless men in bus station in Seoul at 2:30 in the morning. I was waiting for the 5:30AM shuttle. I'm not quite sure why they were there, but they were quite friendly. Some largely toothless man asked me for money in the bathroom. I threw him a couple bucks and then struck up a conversation with him in Korean about where I was from. Whether he had the a thick accent or his tongue was swollen with soju, we will never know, but the conversation was a struggle for sure. From what I gathered, he wanted to eat dog with me in Boston. I agreed to it and prayed to God he wouldn't take me up on it.

Upon arriving at the airport, I learned that Expedia thought it would be funny to switch my flight numbers and times on me without the slightest notification (those bastards). Twice I found myself rushing around airports, trying desperately to catch my flight. Once in Seoul, once in Shanghai. I did have just enough time to use the bathroom in Shanghai, though. This is where I will begin my discourse of China.

Toilets fascinate me. They just do. Especially given the sharp divide between the quasi-futuristic super-intelligent toilets of Korea and the "kill-me-now" squatters of China. That's right, they look like this:

 

Only much dirtier.

The rules are a bit different for bathroom etiquette than in the western world. For instance, having toilet paper near squatters is more of a suggestion than a requirement for the Chinese bathroom. And trust me, after consuming a glut of hyper-spicy Chengdu's specialty Sichuan food, you don't want to be caught pants-down without TP. I'm sure you can decipher why.

Another great little element of the Chinese making-water room is that they have little pandas with Chinese idioms poorly translated into English above each urinal. In English it says "Please aim carefully" but according to Nick (whose Chinese makes me ashamed at my Korean skills) the true translation is something along the lines of "One step closer leads to happier bathrooms."

Such idioms are everywhere and make-up the legendary Chinese Propaganda. Yet in English, something is always lost in the translation. For instance, we saw this while hiking a mountain:

Awesome.

This mountain was truly an excursion and the focal point of the trip (it's nice to do things other than get wasted and eat spicy food, though we did a lot of that too). Three hours outside of the bustling, eleven million denizen, metropolis of Chengdu, stood the magnificent and serene Emei Mountain. Truly a spectacle. Our mission? Spend the night in the town beneath the mountain sipping on Tsing-tso beer and wake up at four AM to scale that beast.

The mellow night we had in mind proved to have a few surprises. I need to preface this by saying Chinese people aren't ghouls, trolls, or any sort of mythological creatures, but I'm about to make them out to be. Throats, feet, hearts, lungs, and eyeballs comprise the typical spectrum of Chinese cuisine. When you eat an animal, boy, you eat the whole damn thing. Ting Ting was a big fan of pointing out which part of the animal I was eating in an attempt to make me comfortably disturbed. One thing I couldn't bring myself to eat was the head of a duck. She laughed and used it like a puppet before eating its skin. That girl is all kinds of cool.

I respect the Chinese for this honesty with animals. They serve you rabbit? You better believe it's coming, head and all. In America, everyone loves Porky Pig, but we try to distance ourselves from the fact that we eat his back meat for breakfast. But that's the truth. In this respect, I made it my mission to embrace my honesty with food. After all, if I'm okay eating an animal, I need to be okay with killing it. And, as means of a test, that night, on the mountain, we got a chicken. No, we didn't order KFC. We found a cage, I pointed to it, the guy took out the chicken, and we followed him to the kitchen. We watched the last moments of Mr. Chicken as the chef slit its throat and drain its blood. Below are the pictures, from purchase to slaughter to dinner.

WARNING - SOME MIGHT FIND THESE SOMEWHAT DISTURBING. IT MAY BE IN YOUR BEST INTEREST TO SCROLL DOWN AND NOT VIEW THE NEXT FOUR PICTURES.

It was an excellent meal. I made sure to eat every bite of it, because, well, otherwise, it just seemed wrong. I realized that I don't have a problem killing animals for food, but I have a huge problem with needlessly killing animals, torturing them, or wasting the food you got from them. The way I see it, if you're a hungry cannibal and you kill me and eat me, you better damn well eat every last bit of me.

But aside from that, I didn't consume anything too wacky. The chance just never came up for rabbit head, frogs legs, or cow penis soup (super expensive and supposedly really good for virility, although Asians think almost everything is good for virility).

That night, we killed a couple of beers and went to bed early (12:30 AM). Nick and I had to be perky for hiking early the next day (Ting Ting was too sleepy). So, in an effort to stay hydrated AND copying my genius father, I used my 20oz Tsing-Tso Beer Bottle as a water bottle in my hotel room. Tap water in China is lethal for your digestive system, so I had to be prudent about filling it up at purified water stations. It worked great at first, quenching my thirtst, until that night. Fumbling for the light switch in the bathroom, I knocked over the beer bottle, shattering it on the floor. Instantly, my foot felt strange. I proceeded to turn on the lights. Watching blood spurting (yes, spurting) from your foot in a Chinese bathroom at 2:00 AM is definitely one for the record books. I hobbled around, trying to wash out the wound. Finally, I got the frustrated hotel owner to give me a couple band-aids for my wound. The Chinese are great people, but not known for their sympathy..

Emei Mountain is famous as it contains a massive Buddhist Temple at its zenith. On one hand, the climb is easy because it's all stairs. On the other hand, there's no way can 5,000 steps ever be considered easy. To get up past the monkey0filled (no joke) lower mountain, we paid a guy to drive us up.If you'd think that leaving at 4:21 in the morning is early enough to make a two hour climb by sunrise, you'd be wrong. This mountain was so crowded, we didn't even start to climb the mountain til well after sunrise.

The climb itself was gorgeous. Turns out, Nick and I were too, because we got more stares, "hello's," and people requesting photo opts with us than I'd ever experienced in Korea. We had a good sweat going by the top, but man, it was worth it...except that we could have paid two Sherpas to carry us up, like this lovely woman did.

Atop the Golden Sumit is the Giant Buddah. It stands at over 150 feet (48 meters) tall and inside, there's a Buddhist Temple. And all around the Golden Summit, you can look over the jaw dropping mountainous terrain, shrouded in clouds, that truly, pictrues cannot do justice (but I took some anyways).

Then after witnessing heaven, I proceeded to hell. The bus ride down the mountain. In a previous blog post, I mentioned how Koreans are terrible drivers. Since then, I have been enlightened. Chinese people obey traffic laws like the Koreans obey copyright laws. If that was too obscure, Chinese drivers are freakishly bad. Allow me to supplement this blatant racism with some concrete evidence.

On the way home from the airport, I thought it was bad when we were weaving between bicycles and people crossing the street without using signals and cutting off fellow automobiles just for the hell of it. But the bus ride down the mountain would make James Bond lose his bowel control. Our bus driver was gunning it downhill a two lane road (one lane going up the mountain, one going down) with no breakdown lane. About every twenty seconds, there was a hairpin turn that he whipped around like it was Chengdu Drift: Bus Edition. Now, normally, that would be bad. But what added to the choking absurdity of this ride was that motorists constantly passed each other. On the straightaways? Heeeellllllllllllllllllllllll no! On the blind hairpin turns. How could they possibly do this safely? By beeping their horn at every turn as a warning.

Now you might be saying to yourself, "Dan, if they beep, it's totally safe. The other cars will know to slow down" Why are you always wrong? Think about this situation: When people going up are passing and people going down are passing. They both decide to beep for safety. Can the cars hear each other? Of course not. They're too busy beeping. And some people just don't give a shit. I need to make clear to you how much I am not exaggerating this. There was at least one time I was certain we were going to smash a blue sedan off the side of the mountain. The mortality rate on that mountain...well you get the idea..

The important thing is: we survived. Thank. God.

Now here's some fun facts about China.

• In a restaurant, when you have trash (dirty napkins, food bones) it's customary to just throw them on the floor. It's so awesome and lazy at the same time it's worth the trip just to do it. 

•  Poor parents sometimes make their children go out and sell flowers in the middle of the night (i.e. beg). A definitively disturbing practice that puts you in the ambiguous ethical situation of whether or not you should give money to them. On one hand, their parents might beat them if they don't bring home money. On the other hand, giving money sustains this practice. It's tough to know what to do.

• Sichuan area (where Chengdu is) is furiously serious about their spice. Things like hotpot, shown below, are what you get when you combine a buffet of uncooked things, a pot of super hot flavored oil, and of course, Sichuan Peppers (aka Chinese Numbing Peppers). For those of you who don't know, this is the stuff they would use before Novocaine was kicking around. A couple years back, Nick brought a bag of Sichuan Peppers to our place on Foster Street. Of course we all popped in about five or six after consuming a fair amount of booze. A truly interesting experience - when you eat them, you can't feel anything in your mouth (except an unholy empty tingling) and you drool like a madman. Sounds crazy, but in food, man, are they tasty.

 

• The Chinese money (RMB) is on the up and up, so prices are rising all around China. Nick was complaining about how the price of a 20oz beer rose from 2.5 quai to a bank-breaking 3.5 quai. For reference, 6.1 quai is about a dollar, so he was bitching about a 20oz beer costing about 58 cents. Upon hearing this, I beat him with a bamboo stick.

For me, one of the most interesting parts of China was how much it defies the stereotypes. Like, for example, how uncommunist it was. If anything, people there are very concerned with money. And the divide between rich and poor is staggering. Beautiful high rise apartments for Lamborghini-totting families are right across from the guy who works 60 hours a week as a waiter for pennies.

Speaking of defying stereotypes, Ting Ting's parents took us out for dinner one night. Amazing people, Buddhists, very welcoming. And oh man could her dad drink. But what was the dinner time conversation about?

Politics.

Wait a minute...something's not right. I thought people were cut up into little pieces and put in the hot dogs for talking politics in China. Is this a set-up?

It's more complicated than that. The Chinese aren't stupid. They understand that there's a lot of propaganda and that their government lies to them. They likewise make the point that America isn't all that different in those respects. But the way it works in China is, as long as they're not talking about tearing down the government and replacing it with democracy, they're more or less free to talk about what they want, as long as it's the right crowd. China isn't the Big Brother Thought Police from 1984. Hell, they don't even block Wikipedia, even though they probably could.

Nick once told me about a conversation he had about freedom of speech with a smart Chinese friend of his.

Nick asked the man: "Don't you want to be free?"

The guy responded: "Free? How am I not free? I live where I want, work where I want, eat what I want, and marry who I want. You want me to complain?"

Interesting viewpoint. Not sure I see completely eye-to-eye with it, but it does make you think.

Speaking of the Chinese government, they have one of the only economies that is actually doing well. And they are sustaining it. Sure they do some illegal things like price adjusting, but at the end of the day, even with 1.4 billion people, they have less malnutrition then America. Seriously, you don't see homeless people. People don't complain about working all the time and everyone eats. It's not some wacky third world country. Though the driving still blows

So that's what I got out of China this time. Sorry, no one tried to drug me this time, and no bar fights. But I think it was even better this time. It's truly an awesome place, though I think Korea was definitely the right choice for me. Why? I'm not quite sure. But it's all good. The more I travel, the more I see how awesome this world is. And everywhere I go, I meet really cool people, and furthermore, see really good families. Ting Ting's family is the same kind of good family as I see in Korea, or as I see in America, or anywhere. Good families like to eat good food, have good conversation, be good to one another, and every so often (or all the time) drink some good drink.

A special thanks to my awesome hosts, and to Chinese people for making some kick-ass food. Next time, more on Korea, but until then, my friends, I miss and love you all.

-Chinese Democracy

P.S. If a certain Cincinnati expat living in Chengdu tells you it's safe to wash fruit in unpurified Chinese water, (you know, that it won't turn your intestines into an amusement park for the next week) do me a favor. Punch him in the throat.

Post #22

Hello Philosophers,

And welcome to Foley in Korea #22. A long time has passed, and there's much that needs to be discussed. For those of you who don't know, I managed to survive the Korean mudslides and flooding, on account of the fact that I was 200 miles away from them. And not only am I survivor, but I'm currently on vacation, which gives me the opportunity to learn you all a little something about this fair land. And we'll start with a little philosophy lesson.

My boss's son (who I've mentioned a number of times before) is four years old and entering that time in a little boy's where he has discovered the most fascinating and annoying question in the English language:

"Why?"

He asks it about everything. "Why do monkeys like bananas?" "Why is the air conditioner broken?" "Why does Daddy look at naked people on the computer?" Now, I know it's cute, and I dig the inquisitiveness, but it's hard to read a book about swans when he averages thirty questions per page (I don't know why swans have white feathers, damn it!). But I have to say, one instance of his curiosity was truly justified.

Instead of peeing all over the place, he's matured to the point where he asks to use the bathroom now. We're all very happy about this. And, seeing as though I have the bladder of a twelve-year-old girl, I usually have to go when he does. So, the other day, we went to the bathroom. There we were, standing, pants around our ankles, in side by side stalls. I'm focused on taking care of my business, when I realize he's looking up at me. Well, looking up at part of me. Then, in a voice full of wonder, he asks:

"Why is yours bigger?"

It is probably the only time anyone will ever ask me that, but that day, the little guy scored major points in my book.

But now, on to bigger, errr...more culturally relevant things.

So, the Korean summer is hot. Like, waking up in a pool of sweat hot. And if there's one thing Koreans are bad at (other than driving), it's insulating apartments. I can leave my air conditioner on for three hours, turn it off, and within minutes my apartment will be a sweltering 88 degrees of thick humidity. So, instead of throwing my money (and cold air) out the window, I opted for a fan. My boss was nice enough to get me one, but upon giving it to me, she gave me an ominous warning:

"Don't leave the fan on with the windows and doors closed."

I looked at her like she was new. What the hell was she talking about?

"Why not?" I ask.

"Every year, a few people die from having fans on them with the windows and doors closed."

Now, I'm trying to wrap my head around this one. At first, I think my boss has lost her damn mind, but after conferring with many Korean friends, this is a legitimate concern in Korea. Their rationale is that "People use up all the oxygen in the room and suffocate." So Korean people are terrified of this phenomenon.

But here's the thing - it defies common sense. Factoring out that extremely poor insulation that would let in fresh oxygen, how would a fan blowing air on you be any different than if it wasn't? It's the same air in the room, whether it's be blasted through moving propellers or not. It just doesn't make any sense. And yet, most Koreans buy into this paranoia.

And sadly, I do too. Logically, I know it's foolishness, but I'd rather be safe then sorry. This place is starting to rub off on me. That's why I don't trim my toenails at night. Bad luck.

But one thing that hasn't rubbed off on me yet is Paris Baguette. Paris Baguette, along with a slew of other Korean bakeries, is the pinnacle of mismatched food. You might be wondering how you can put a terrible Korean twist on a donut, but I promise, it's not hard. The mission statement of said establishment, I gather, is something along the lines of:

"We take a delicious pastry, bake it to perfection, and then throw some weird shit into it, and serve it to you, with a smile on our face."

For those of you who may have missed it, the equation follows Normal Pastry + Nonsense = Korean Delight.

Now, how bad could they mess up a croissant? How about by sticking a room temperature hot dog in there, with room temperature cheese, and salsa. Now, I like all those things, but try to imagine a sweet bun mixed with a salty hot dog and bitter salsa, and then, cheese. Your stomach growling? No? Me neither. Or the never overrated glazed onion crawler. That's right, it's a delectable glazed donut, twisted around and around, and infused with just onion flavor to make you wonder how fast donuts grow mold. Or my personal favorite - what I thought was a powdered jelly donut. Wrong again. Powdered donut on the outside. Shredded steak and pepper on the inside. That one's actually not even that bad, but loses points for false advertising. It's like a really convincing drag queen. The outside looks great but the inside is...well, you get the idea.
 
And the truly baffling thing about these bakeries is that they don't open til 8 in the morning. Some not til 9. Same with coffee shops. It's like they totally missed the point.

And speaking of missing the point, I sometimes feel this country totally biffs it and I don't understand how it could do the things it does. Other times, I feel like Korea is right on the money, and we could all learn a lesson. Here are two such examples.

I've mentioned plastic surgery before. The statistics speak for themselves. Some studies show that half of Korean girls in their mid-twenties have had some work done. Now. while I'm fervently against it, except in situations of actual physical deformities (burn victims, mangled noses, etc.) I understand that I don't call the shots. If a girl needs a confidence boost and thinks making her eyes (or other parts of her body) bigger will make her happy, can I really stand in the way? No, that would be wrong. (Ironically, as I'm writing this, I'm getting an advertisement in the corner of my screen for liposuction). But there is one thing I have a problem with, and I think I can make a moral claim about.



Parents giving their children plastic surgery. Yep, yep, yeppers. It happens. Is it common? It's starting to be. Some parents reward children for good grades with a trip to the cosmetic surgeon. How young? Some reports say as early as twelve years old. Some say younger (but I cannot confirm those). I don't know the truth, but I do know there is something truly disturbing about this practice. All health issues aside (sculpting faces, eyes, and bones that are not done growing can have devastating results), the social ramifications cannot be ignored.

This advantage of being the prettiest (if you want to call it that) girl in school because of surgery creates a necessity for it. It's like steroids in baseball. If no one's doing steroids, there's no problem. But once some players start doing it, they have an artificial edge that is tough to compensate by normal measures. The result? Steroids become an epidemic. Again, I have serious qualms about plastic surgery in general - but come on, can't we wait til they're eighteen to make their nose look more western?

But, in a twisted way, parents do this out of love. They want their girl to be the most successful, happiest girl they can be. And here, plastic surgery is a plausible means to do just that.

Good CNN video here http://cnn.com/video/?/video/world/2011/05/23/lah.skorea.plastic.surgery.cnn about a twelve year old girl who got plastic surgery. Very interesting stuff.

And while that's a bit deranged, let's talk about something good. Language.

Translating Korean into English is sometimes not a direct translation. Sure 버스 (bu-suh) and bus refer to the same moving vehicle that transports people to cheap to buy a car, but translating directly can sometimes be misleading. For instance, Koreans don't have the present perfect in the way we do (I have eaten 25 hot dogs today). Likewise their verb for "have" or "has" is "있어요" (eess-o-yo) meaning more "there is" or "there are." Furthermore, Koreans often leave out pronouns (like "I" or "you") in a sentence because the meaning is implied. And everyone your age is "친구" or "friend" whereas older and younger people are referred to as "older/younger brother/sister," whereas we're more apt to say "that guy" or "my classmate."

The question you're probably asking is, "Why should I care? They have different words. Whoop-dee-do!"

You've got some attitude.

Think about the significance of this. In English, we are more possessive. The idea of "I have done this" mean we "have" an experience. It's ours. I have a girlfriend, I have a monkey, I have something. Whereas, in Korean, you look at things as merely "there." You say "there is a monkey." You are not claiming ownership over said monkey, you are merely stating that it exists. You don't say "I have been bungie jumping" you merely say "bungie jumping happened."

Think of the ramifications of that. The idea of ownership, especially with land (made super important by John Locke, Englishman), has been the foundation for our basic laws in America. Our laws are about "having" rights. This is mine, not yours.




While keeping that in mind, let's go back to the Korean language. They often leave out the ideas of "me" and "you" and call everyone "friend" or "family." It's not "Do you want to eat food with me?" It's "eat food?" Just the idea, nothing more. Or you address them as brother and say, "Hey bro, food is good."  This is where I wonder if, perhaps, language causes a rift between us. You take the furiously independent mentality of America - is it always a good thing? Could we benefit from thinking about others as more family, and stop worrying so much about what's mine and what's yours and just worry about what is? Or are my hippie ideas to far out and groovy for you?

And this brings me to Bubble Bar. While I've mentioned it before, I must explain the relevence of this Gwang-ju institution. It's arguably the most international place in Korea, where people from Korea and Persia and Nigeria and India and China and America and Britian and all the silly countries in-between get together to interact in a cesspool of sin. No, it's not hell on earth, but it is notably sketchy and brings out some of Korean society's more colorful and provocative individuals. And what does this international community do in Bubble Bar? Dance...and then fight. Bubble Bar has more fights than anywhere else in Gwang-ju. And sadly, the origins of the fights are frequently tied to race or nationality. You wanna see Egyptians battling with Syrians, blacks versus whites, Koreans against Chinese, and everything in the middle? Look no further.

My friend D is a bartender there. This is a man who, in his tenure in the Korean military, had a landmind blow up in his face. If anyone is prepared to work there, it's him. He talks about the frequency of tournament style brawls in Bubble, where two people will get into an argument. It escalates, and then, throughout the duration of the night, all of their friends will take turns fighting, not at the same time, but through various points throughout the night, until everyones bigotry has been justified.

This bothers me so much because I grew up in the 90's, where every TV show featured the "Burger King Kids Club" ideal (shown below)



Where, some of us are Asian or black or white kids with weird blonde hair and glasses, but we can all get along. There were a million examples of this: Power Rangers, Recess, the brochure for Northfield Mount Hermon (shown below)



But, the more intrinsic differences I see between people, and the way the world is, sometimes I wonder if it's possible for there to exist peace between such varying ideologies, languages, and people. I mean, is this world destined for destruction? Are these ideas of world peace and coexistence and all colors high-fiving and watching the Olympics together just a farce?

I say no. What brings me to this conclusion? The Boryeong Mud Festival. What is a Mud Festival you ask? It's a place where people get covered in mud and...well that's about it. There's mud and mud beer and mudslides and mudmusic and mudwrestling and mudobstaclecourses and mud everything. And what kind of people attended this event? Everyone you could possibly think of. Why? Because everyone has fun together playing in the mud.

This made me realize - what the world needs to get along isn't trying to work out our differences - it's about being united under a common goal, like feeding the world, or curing cancer, or killing aliens, or in this case, mud. Because, when you're covered in mud, no one can tell what race you look like. When you're covered in mud, everyone looks the same....

Like a zombie.



Special points were added to my enjoyment of mudfest when I blasted my friend Krista in the eye with my mud filled Thomas the Tank Engine squirt gun. She was wearing contacts and the mud managed to wedge in between her pupil and the contacts. She cried for ten minutes. I tried not to pee myself laughing.    


(Above is moments before I blinded her with my flawless aim).

But aside from that heavy philosophical mumbo jumbo, my friends, I have just two quick announcements, and you can get back to your lives.

1.) I just had to turn down a modeling gig (working all day next Monday) because I have to work. I was going to be in a commercial for a construction company. And if you laugh at that, you're not really my friend.

2.) I'm off to China tomorrow to visit my boy Nick and his girl Tingting. The next Foley in Korea Blog will be focused on Foley in China, which, I know, we're all very excited about.

I miss and love you all. Peace out,

-Mudman