Big Trouble, Little China

If you haven’t seen that movie, I highly recommend it. Kurt Russell at his finest.

Things in Qinhuangdao are lovely as always. They are knocking down very ugly stores and homes on Hebei Road, the road on which you will find the Olympic soccer stadium. I do wonder where all of those people scratching out their livings from those hovels have gone, but that’s neither here nor there. One of the most shocking things about China has actually been the horrific architecture blighting the countryside and city. Traditional Chinese architecture is gorgeous, but that has, for the most part, gone by the wayside (unless you count “restoration” initiatives, which usually include knocking down ancient structures to build fake, new old-looking ones). One of my students describes the majority buildings in China as “Doufu buildings.” Doufu is tofu, often sold here off of the backs of motorcycles. It comes in big, gray-white blocks. A guy smoking a cig and wielding a spatula scrapes the doufu blocks off a slat of wood and into a plastic baggie for you. And, it is true that most of the buildings we see are big, gray-white blocks, jutting out helter skelter from the earth. Back in my days as a community news reporter on the mean streets of Orland Park, I sat in on planning meetings, listening to developers and zoning commission battle it out over the placement of berms and right of ways and frontage parking lots. I decided then that hell must be a never ending zoning commission meeting. As city planners tried in vain to turn around Orland Park’s strip mall image, I mustered all of my eye socket strength to stay awake. Dare I admit that now, finally, I see a point to the boring jargon and long-term planning?

On an unrelated note, I want to take a moment to give a shout out to the taxi drivers of Qinhuangdao. I read so much about taxi scams before I came here that just getting in a cab sent me into a jaded, skeptical place. I hope that people visiting Qinhuangdao for the Olympics don’t go to that suspicious place and that they always treat the taxi drivers well. Also, do realize that traffic laws are enforced rarely (if there are any at all). Your driver might take it upon himself to pass at full speed on a two-lane road with a city bus, two scooters and a pedestrian in his oncoming path. He will blare the horn at each and every last one of them. And yes, your seatbelt is probably broken, but really, it’s all part of the thrill. In cities in the south (Shanghai and Nanjing, especially) it felt impossible to get a cab. Nanjing cab drivers just ignored us, and in Shanghai they were all full. Qinhuangdao cabbies always stop and I’ve never been mislead by them. They crowd around bus and train stations vying for your attention and business but you need not fear them as they shout “Laowai!” (Foreigner!…or “Waiguoren”- outside person!”) with a look of sheer amazement in their eye. They are not predators; there are just too many taxi drivers and not enough business, and they can’t believe they are seeing real live white folk. They just want to give you a ride. If you’re lucky, you might get a cab with a tricked-out horn and a good selection of Chinese pop, which will be blared for your entertainment as the driver revs his ride.

In class news, I thought it might be clever to have my students respond to a very nasty column by one Dan Wetzel, a Yahoo.com sports correspondent. The piece, “Fanning the flame of controversy” aims to criticize International Olympic Committee for choosing to host the Olympics here. But along the way the writer rips apart China with gross generalizations, sprinkled with good old, stereotypical American arrogance. He goes so far as to complain about squat toilets. His niche, like so many a columnist, is that of loud-mouthed thorn-in-the-side. I get it. Even so, he made me un-proud to be an American, not to mention embarrassed for sports journalism and disgusted that the 24-7 news cycle would stoop to this. And this published on a Web site that claims 20+ times more readership than the Wallstreet Journal. The writer’s dabble from sports into political musings wasn’t exactly Bono-esque. No, it was shallow. Shallow like Tara Reid making speeches at a congressional hearing and about as endearing as her wilted breast implants. Given the fact that I was so offended, I wondered how my students would feel, and I took the column to class. I immediately regretted it. I’ve never seen sadder faces in my life. His words created a shadow of the doom. “How do you feel?” I asked. “Angry,” offered one student, the rest sitting dejected in stone silence. We next talked about the various points he made in the column. “Good,” I said. “I want you to use this column to craft an argumentative response letter. Then, we’ll send them all to his office!” My enthusiasm was met at first with blank stares. But one by one, they began to write. One of my students walked to the front of the room. “Teacher, we usually don’t respond to things like this. He uses barely any facts.” “You’re right,” I said. “He is doing something called generalizing. And you can respond to generalizations with facts. Then your writing will naturally make good points. And you can even say, ‘Normally, I wouldn’t respond, but this is a class assignment; I am being forced.’”Tomorrow we’ll go over the letters in class; and then, off they go to Yahoo corporate.