Category: Uncategorized

I used to think I was worldly, well-traveled, and tolerant. After many years of traveling and studying abroad, I enjoyed dispensing advice on how to adjust to new cultures, where to go, and what to pack (see previous post). I even claimed I did not get culture shock anymore, since I was so used to trotting the globe and being all cosmopolitan.

Suffice to say I was punished for my arrogance a week ago.

I spent that day studying for my finals, and decided to take a shower before going to sleep.

Our shower stalls are divided by matte glass walls — they are not exactly diaphanous, but not opaque, either, and you can see vague outlines of the body of the person showering next to you.

As I was lathering, rinsing, and repeating, I detected two girls’ voices close to me; they were chatting in Chinese too fluent to be that of any of my fellow students (no offense), so I figured they were our Chinese roommates.

Since I could hear water running in the stall next to mine, without thinking, my mind registered it as one of the girls was showering, and the other was standing outside talking to her.

But when I looked up, I realized there were two body contours in that stall.

So at first I though they were making out, and delicately turned away.

(Going to a very liberal international boarding school and then living at a dorm at a fairly liberal college alters your expectations of dorm showers).

And then I realized they were chatting in a regular, friendly manner — no heavy breathing or flirtatious intonations. I carefully gazed up — and yes, I could see two body contours also lathering, rinsing, and repeating, each in their part of the shower stall. The stall was pretty small, so they were pretty close to each other.

I looked the other way, and saw that the stall on the other side of mine was available, so they were showering together voluntarily, not because there was no other place to shower.

And that just blew my mind.

I walked out of the shower having forgotten to finish rinsing my hair, and went to my room. I must have looked pretty confused, since my Chinese roommate asked me what was wrong. Having concentrated enough to speak Chinese, I asked her:

-In China, do girls shower together?

-Yeah.

-And that’s, um, common?

-Yeah. I don’t really like it though, but many of my friends do.

-Do guys do that, too?

-Some do, yeah.

I still don’t know why it shocked me so much.

If the two girls were in fact making out, I would have not cared at all. I certainly don’t care what people do in the showers in their spare time. I don’t exactly have a crazy puritan approach to nudity, either: I have been to plenty of public saunas/lockerrooms/etc; I go to a local gym in Beijing where women feel free to stroll around naked while changing in the locker room, and that does not bother me much.

Unless it was a complete shower emergency, it would just never occur to me to shower with a friend. In some dorms in China, hot water is turned off at a certain time. So, say, if I got back from the gym with a friend, and there was just one shower stall, and we had ten minutes, I would not mind sharing a stall — although I’d probably wear bikini or underwear.

But in my opinion, showering with friends just does not cut it as a social activity.

The stall is small, there is one shower, which means you have to take turns. Our dorm stalls here are larger than those at Yale, but not gigantic, either.

I have never been known to take long showers, so showering time is not exactly sacred to me, either. In fact, if I get back to my dorm from shopping with girlfriends, and we decide to take a shower and then go eat out, I will be waiting for them long after I am done showering and changing. There is not much to do in there: even with letting that conditioner soak in and scrubbing my body raw, my showers are never longer than 10 minutes.

I do think that showers are relaxing, but I just don’t get what one is supposed to do there to spend around 20 minutes or more — I always guessed people had some sort of secret shower behavior. Standing still while the hot water is flowing over you and pretending they are in the Caribbean, doing their secret dance routine, singing, etc. That would make people wish for some privacy in a shower, right?

Even though I don’t seem to have any of that secret showering behavior, I still don’t understand why one would shower with friends. And no, I am not judgmental or critical, I just honestly don’t see the point.

Going to a spa together, getting hair done together, painting each other’s toenails even — all of these fit in my understanding of social interactions with females (and males, too, sometimes). Women often bond over some sort of grooming rituals, and what’s a better foundation of friendship then getting pedicures and discussing the latest trends in nailpolish?

I don’t think I have ever heard anyone else comment on this topic — I am guessing it might be because most foreigners in China don’t come across showering Chinese that often.

Or maybe no one else finds it strange?

It was the very first day of big summer sales. A friend and I hit several stores, emerging with bagfuls of clothing and accessories. She had found a pair of Zara shoes that she liked, but they ran out of her size. So we went to a Starbucks to get a latte, and I took out my iPhone to check if they were other malls with a Zara store in them so that we could go hunt down her size.

Does that sound familiar to you? I’ve had very similar experiences from Moscow to Berlin to New York; this time around, it was Beijing. I had been to Beijing several times before, my activities mostly limited to seeing millenia-old buildings or Communist memorabilia. So it had never occurred to me that Beijing was actually quite a shopper’s paradise.(Do blame airlines’ ridiculous weight allowances for my need to go indulge in consumerism).

Surprisingly, Beijing is in many ways much more consumerism-friendly than Moscow or NYC. Its malls are mostly very recently built (the one we went to is only two years old), and they feature exciting architecture, spacious food courts, and escalators galore (not to mention ubiquitous ads mostly featuring very Caucasian models). Beijingers love their sales as much as any red-blooded capitalist, and they enjoy a nice array of European, American, and Asian brands. There are, of course, cultural differences: Starbucks features coffee with jelly in it (jelly is added to various beverages in China); most snacks on display are cut-up fruit, not deep-fried-high-trans-fat-inedible-fast food; 99% of moisturizers feature whitening ingredients; I need a Small in European brands, an Extra-small in American ones (talk about vanity sizing), and a Large/Extra large in the Asian ones (talk about bruised ego). Plus, the Asian brands never carry my shoes size (a shocking 8-8.5). Other than that, local malls have that cosmopolitan feel to them that so many others ones all over the world do. Good for Bejing and Beijingers and us expats, right?

Having grown up in a post-Communist environment and having heard stories about shortage of everything, food and toilet paper included, I really came to appreciate being able to choose a gym bag from fifty different colors and shapes in at least twenty stores at the same mall. Of course, there is an income gap and the fact that most of the population will never be able to afford said gym bag, yet alone a coffee at Starbucks, but I’ve spent enough time in Russia to stop being sensitive to that fact. What really shocked me about local malls was how un-communist it all felt. Here I was in a middle of a country that blocks YouTube and -sometimes – Google, sets limits on the height of dogs, and requires foreigners to register with the authorities for as long as a one night stay with friends — not too mention much more serious violations of jus cogens — and everyone was happily hitting the sales. I wonder if the key to having a successful authoritarian regime is providing the masses with enough entertainment to make them forget the politics of it all?

Several Chinese friends who speak good English didn’t know the English word for ‘communism’, yet they can comfortably discuss lattes, sales, hairstyles, and what’s in vogue. I told a friend a joke about the CCP standing for the Chinese Capitalist Party, and she thought it was so true she had texted it to her friends right away. Many young adults appear not to care about Mao, Deng, or “whoever-the-leader-is-at-the-moment.” They have been through some political education classes, but never paid attention. They know that people sometimes disappear, but they stopped worrying about a long time ago, because most people don’t. They study English and want to go to college in the US, Europe, and Australia, or, in the worst case scenario, get a job with a foreign company in Beijing or Shanghai. They admit they don’t care about politics. All they want is a lifestyle filled with friends, fun, and shopping.

When I went on a day trip to a nearby village (very tourist-oriented, with all sorts of signs and sights and whatnot), many houses had signs that read: “Beijing Rural Tourism Household — Rated by Beijing Rural Tourism Household Rating Commission.” Which means there is a special government body that walks around rating rural households: “Congratulations, you made it! You are now a model household fit for being showed off to tourists!” That seems like a little too much government intervention to me.

China has just now blocked Facebook. Now, when they clocked YouTube I didn’t mind as much since I am not an avid user; but Facebook?!

In the meantime, life goes on. The malls are filed with customers, and the Internet censors are hard at work.

How exotic can a blonde on a treadmill be?

I have been asking myself that question for the past week.

I signed up for a 2 months membership at a neighborhood gym in Beijing (yes, I am in Beijing for the next 6 or so months; more details later). It’s a great gym with all sorts of facilities, and a great membership price ($40 for 2 months!). Their trademark is asking their patrons about their zodiac signs, and then putting them on the membership cards. Here’s mine:

Just how cool is this kickboxing bull? 🙂

So yes, I am loving this gym, and it’s great to go while going to combat the stress of five hours of Chinese class five times a week. The only problem is that I attract too much attention. Other gym-goers have been randomly whipping out cameras/cell phones and taking pictures of me. Furthermore, people have been taking pictures of me at subway stations. A few days ago I got approached by a waiter at dinner who asked me if I was Russian. (Is my citizenship written in large neon letters on my forehead? I am not ethnically Russian) She explained that I am “blonde and pretty” and hence Russian.

I used to be pretty self-conscious about things like this (you know, being taken pictures of while sweaty and running that last mile), but I thankfully got over it several years ago in Hong Kong. But I still find it pretty funny.

I am really enjoying China so far, save for the going to class part (ok, ok, I do like my 25 hours of Chinese per week, but shhhh, it’s a secret). I have been experimenting with buying interesting Chinese foods a lot. This is something that they call ‘grass jelly’ in Hong Kong.

These packages come with a thick layer of plastic that takes a lot of stabbing with scissors to open. As far as I can tell, they fall into a category of Chinese dessert. And yes, I have been living without chocolate for over a week now. I have managed to track down coffee (of the instant variety, but that’s still pretty good), but chocolate isn’t available just about everywhere unlike in the westernized parts of the world. Oh well — we’ll see how long I can make it without chocolate.

Guess where I will be on April 22? At the Undergraduate Senior Art Show, probably amongst many other students – trying to find my way to Aliza Shvarts’ senior art project. Because what can be more attractive than videos of an undergrad undergoing miscarriages?

Not really; I just want to see her exhibit for myself.

According to Jonathan Schell, an author and an intellectual, who is my professor in a seminar on non-violence (how very relevant!), “Watch presidential candidates being asked questions about this.” And, according to my classmate in that class, “Too bad Huckabee dropped out, he would have made a couple of interesting comments.” Another added, “How will she apply for a job?” Another one wanted to know who was filming her videos (“Would you mind holding a camera while I am having a self-induced abortion in my bathtub?”). Another one was curious as to how she got men to be her inseminators (“Um, so I am working on this senior project…would you mind providing me with some sperm?”)

According to Yale, Shvarts did not have any pregnancies/miscarriages/sperm donors – it was all a made-up story.

According to Shvarts, who wrote a guest column for today’s issue Yale Daily News, it is all true.

Go figure.

Yale’s message boards are full of anti-abortion posters; a Facebook ad invites the Yale community to attend a candlelight vigil to honor abortion victims.

I am pro-choice, so I believe she had a right to do that to herself; at the same time, I feel overwhelmed that someone would be so ruthless (if her story is indeed true) to their body.

What do you think?