A Year in Beijing - An Essay

It is better to travel ten thousand miles than read ten thousand books

I came to China for two reasons. I had always wanted to travel but didn’t care much for back packing. I thought the only way you could know a country and its people was by living and working there. This lead to the second reason. I decided the best way of traveling and working was to teach English yet I had no formal teaching qualifications. China was one of the only countries where you didn’t need experience or training, you were an expert by simply speaking English. My initial idea was to gain a years teaching proficiency after which I could live and work in most countries in the world

I didn’t know anything about China, its history or people, I didn’t even know anyone who had been there on holiday. I read the usual information guides and determined I would learn as much as I could whilst there. My only expectation was that I would meet some like-minded fellow explorers and have an enjoyable learning experience. I received a job offer over the Internet, bought a return ticket and left with roughly one thousand-yuan spending money.

I landed in the old Beijing airport on a humid morning in late August 1999. I was exhausted from the 24-hour journey and looking forward to a long sleep. My manager met me and said, “Hello. Can you start working today?” Thinking there was something amiss with my hearing, I smiled. We took an hour long taxi ride during which I bombarded him with questions on everything I saw.

I was looking forward to my first taste of authentic Chinese food and asked if we could stop somewhere to eat. He took me to a pizza place where I burnt my mouth on the worst pizza I have ever tasted in my life. He then showed me the dormitory I was to live in until a shared apartment became available. He dumped my stuff in the room and left saying he would collect me in a couple of hours for teacher training.

The room contained a wardrobe, single bed, desk and bathroom. I fell on the bed and fell asleep. My manager phoned around three inquiring as to whether I was ready to begin teacher training. With closed eyes I patiently explained I was exhausted and requested permission to begin the next day. He reluctantly agreed and arranged to collect me at eight the next morning.

I awoke around ten in the evening, fruitlessly searched the communal fridge for food then emailed a friend to phone my family and tell them I’d arrived safely. I remained awake, flicking through the television channels and my guide book to Beijing.

My teacher training consisted of going through a book I was to recite to my students, showing me a name register and telling me I started that evening at half six. I decided to walk home and got lost, I ended up wandering down squalid streets with people playing games, sitting outside talking and squatting. Luckily I carried a map and managed to persuade a taxi to drive around in circles for forty minutes then take me back to the dormitory where I promptly fell asleep.

At five my manager took me to the school, showed me a classroom and left. At least he was consistent. I met a couple of other teachers who were friendly but I was too nervous for small talk. At half six I stood in front of a white board with a trembling name register and a load of expectant students waiting for me to begin the class. I finished the three hour session shaking with exhaustion and in dire need of a beer. None of the other teachers took me up on the offer so I went back to the dormitory for another sleepless night.

After a week new teachers arrived, we went to Tienanmen square and flew a kite. I was struck by its enormity, solemnity and historical significance. Afterwards we went to a bar where one of the teachers admitted he was teetotal and came from a Mennonite background and the other reeled off racist and sexist jokes until I threatened to bottle him. I decided to find other friends. Alas it wasn’t to be. I later discovered the school was like a psychiatric hospital out patients. I could visualize Freud rubbing his hands and saying next please. There seemed to be every kind of psychological ailment from obesity to psychosis. I was beginning to wonder where I fitted into the scheme of things.

I was becoming more confident in the classroom and decided to put my bizarre social life on hold for the time being or until I found someone who could speak a coherent sentence. I wanted to learn Chinese, begin writing my second novel and make as many Chinese friends as possible. When the term finished I seemed to be popular with my students and was taken to various tourist places such as The Summer Palace and Beijing Amusement Park. I enjoyed the former being truly impressed with the architecture and peaceful atmosphere. We sat talking for a few hours sipping green tea beside a lake full of lotus flowers. It was a release from the grey monotony of Beijing. Although, due to the forthcoming fiftieth anniversary of the Peoples Republic, trees, shrubs and flowers were being planted everywhere. I arranged to meet one group of students again and was pleased they wanted me to be their friend.

During the October break the weather cooled and I explored the San le tun area. I didn’t feel comfortable there however, it was too full of tourists. I wanted to experience Chinese life not assume the life I’d had at home. I met up with the students who’d taken me to the Summer Palace, we went to a Chinese bar without a tourist in sight and they taught me a dice drinking game. I was disappointed however, that none of the women seemed to drink. I ate out every night although my choice was limited due to being a strict vegetarian. Fortunately the range of tofu dishes were varied and I thought Chinese food was delicious. It was nothing like the mush they served in China town.

My sleeping pattern remained abnormal, I slept until three in the afternoon, ate lunch then prepared for work. My original idea of learning Chinese and starting my new novel were sidelined by the cheap beer. I told myself I had a year and there was no rush. Through my students, I assimilated information on the various festivals, myths and legends. The significance of colours, numbers and other superstitions. Itching with curiosity I broached politics to no avail. I explored other issues such as ethics, ancient history and materialism. I was especially concerned with the latter, it seemed as though anything could be bought.

I was disappointed to observe the high number of old Western men with young, attractive females. I thought the teachers were abusing their positions and taking advantage. Indeed, one teachers’ girlfriend was fifty years younger than him

Winter drew in and I was incredibly lonely. I was so introspective I could see the fuzzy outlines of my brain. I realised my students didn’t want to be friends with me they just wanted to practice English. I still hadn’t come across a sane teacher near my own age, indeed I was beginning to doubt my own sanity. Everyone seemed to have come here because they were rejected from their own culture, like driftwood they’d ended up in China.

There were people from bizarre religious groups set on re educating the Chinese, burnt out ex military or young men running around having sex with anything that moved. I’d given up trying to get on with them. The ones who seemed relatively sane ended up hating everything and anyone Chinese. I couldn’t understand why they remained, then realised they had nowhere else to go.

When I wasn’t lying on my bed mulling over my past, my reasons for being in China and how the universe worked, I was reading. I read as many books as I could on Chinese history, politics, classical literature and philosophy. Of course I could have spent that time learning Chinese or writing my book. I made feeble inquiries into a private tutor then recoiled at the expense. I made a half hearted attempt at a novel in long hand then decided Dickens was obviously as mad as the rest of them and gave up.

I went to Hong Kong for Christmas. As I was leaving Beijing, the sub zero temperatures and pollution, I thought what if this is it, this is the last time I see the place am I pleased? I decided I wasn’t and was actually enjoying myself in an unfathomable warped way. On the first day of the new millennium I awoke in a small boat on Hong Kong harbour with no recollection of how I got there. I missed my return train and was forced to take a hard seater. I stood for the first seven hours squashed against a window until I managed to secure the corner of an overcrowded seat and sleep.

When I returned from Hong Kong I caught flue then bronchitis. I developed a hacking cough, unhindered by the fact I’d become a chain smoker. I tasted my first dose of foul Chinese medicine in small brown bottles that proclaimed to exhume harmful hot winds and cool the system.

I was fortunate enough to be allowed backstage and take photographs of Beijing opera performers donning themselves for the stage. I attended three shows, The Monkey King’s Fall from Heaven was my favourite because it was mostly gong fu. I learnt that, even though they trained from the age of twelve, opera singers were paid, at most, 500 yuan a month.

I visited tea houses which remain my most luxuriant and favourite activity in Beijing. I climbed to the temple in the Fragrant Hills park, it was dark by the time I reached the top and I nearly killed myself descending. I went rowing in Behai Park and ate vegetarian Beijing duck. I played an all night session of mah jong with three old women who chain smoked, quaffed whiskey and couldn’t speak a word of English. I visited the Temple of Heaven and stood in the center of the universe. Lit incense in the Yong he gong temple and prayed for longevity. I was interviewed by and appeared on CCTV. To all appearances I was having a good time.

I bought a battered second hand computer and began writing my new book over the Spring Festival accompanied by the sound of a million fireworks. I wrote all day everyday only taking a break to light some firecrackers.

My mother came to visit and I showed her the Great Wall, Forbidden City, acrobatics and countless other tourist sites. The Great Wall filled me with awe and sadness. It was incredible to stand on one of the worlds’ greatest achievements yet somehow sacrilegious to stand on the longest gravestone in the world. As I looked down the steep incline, I couldn’t help imagining all those people who sacrificed their lives in an exercise ultimately futile.

My mother left not knowing what to make of the place and I was surprised how genuinely enthusiastic and proud of living in China I had become. I wanted her to leave with a good impression and I think she did albeit a strange one. Amazingly we’d managed to wend our way on my limited Chinese which consisted of zhei ge.

I’d been in China for two weeks and was talking to another new arrival about his experience teaching in Swaziland. I asked him what culture shock was like. He gave a wry smile and said it’s when you realise you’re living in a different culture. I looked around and said I already know. He said you don’t, it hasn’t hit you yet. He was right.

Whilst here, I’ve seen three expressions of culture shock. The first is blatant racism. Everything Chinese is either distasteful, uncivilised, inferior or a mixture of the above. One woman I met was petrified her son would marry a Chinese woman and she would have to accept the Chinese into her family. Another is indifference. A continuation of life at home, you only know people from your own or similar nationalities. You eat the same food you would at home and stick to your known lifestyle. You view the Chinese as something to be tolerated as a necessary part of living in China. The third is to create a life style in which you feel comfortable without adopting the first two attitudes. I was trying desperately to adapt but was still a foreigner.

Being called a foreigner is a vague insult. Like a foreign body in your eye, it’s something that isn’t meant to be there and should be ejected as soon as possible. The Chinese for foreign is waigouren or outside people. I felt as though I was tolerated because of my language. If it wasn’t for the fact I spoke English, I wasn’t wanted here. After a while, like an alcoholic standing up in a meeting, I was forced to admit I wasn’t Chinese.

I was worn down by this you and us attitude in my classroom. “You wouldn’t understand you’re not Chinese”, “In China we think...” I was even called a primate by one of my students. Anything bad in China was caused by harmful outside influence: I felt like a pariah.

Even though I wouldn’t admit it, I was beginning to hate China. I was homesick, lonely and depressed and there was no escape. Every time I walked outside I was stared at, shouted at, ripped off, laughed at. I couldn’t just blend into the background and observe life from a safe distance; I was the main attraction everywhere I went. People stopped eating and stared at me in restaurants, watched to see if I could use chopsticks, laughed at my pronunciation then doubled the bill.

I wanted to make friends but the only people I had the opportunity to know were desperate to learn English, they didn’t want me to learn Chinese. If I attempted to speak it it was greeted with hearty guffaws and sniggers. I felt like Sisyphus, every time I attained a sense of comprehension, I experienced something that pushed me down again. ¹

I thought everyone was money driven with little emphasis on spirituality. There was no sense of individuality, people echoed others and clung to their families. It was rife with corruption from my students giving me presents for favourable results to paying off the police for indulgences.

Women were blatantly repressed and treated appallingly.

It seemed to be de rigueur to beat up your wife or have a lover. The latter a consequence of habitually marrying for social or financial gain.

Children lost their childhoods competing for key schools and universities.

It was a country based on appearance as opposed to depth exemplified by the fiftieth anniversary celebrations. Billions were spent giving the world the impression of development when the money should have been spent on development.

Everyone seemed superficial, working within a framework of reciprocity rather than genuine friendship. I was there to embellish, teach English or exploit. My list of complaints continued ad infinitum.

For me to make a success of living in China one of us would have to concede: either I changed or it did. I was battling with a sense of hypocrisy and failure. I felt as abhorrent as the other racists I’d avoided, I couldn’t think of anything positive about the country that was now my home and every fibre in my body seemed to be reacting with suppressed moral outrage. I’d failed. I wanted to leave and not look back.

The way the wind blows, that's the way the grass bends

At the end of April it dawned on me that, contrary to my initial conviction, China wasn’t going to adapt to my way of thinking. I couldn’t spend the rest of my year seething with moral contempt; I needed to gain perspective and understanding.

In order to apprehend rather than despise the culture, I studied Buddhism, Confucius and Lao zi. I even dipped my toe into the esoteric waters of I Ching then decided my life wouldn’t be long enough to fathom it. To emphasise how different the thinking is I asked my students a moral dilemma. You are on a boat with your mother, spouse and child. The boat capsizes and you are the only one who can swim. All the people are of equal distance who do you rescue first? A typical Chinese answer is my mother. Why? Because you only have one mother, you can remarry and have another spouse or child.

This fundamental concern with filial piety stems from Confucius who said that a child who harms one hair on its body harms its parents. Thus the truly virtuous have the utmost respect for their parents. Filial piety is the foundation on which Chinese society is based and has been since Confucius, which explained why my students appeared so dependent.

From the family up, relationships are very important but the idea of a relationship is not the same concept most Westerners have. Relationships are based on obligation networks, which are collectivist rather than ego orientated. The individual is at the centre of a series of concentric circles, the close set being family.

There are no standards for rights or morals. Unlike most countries in the West, people are not seen as equal they are treated according to their position in society. Hence there are multiple standards for dealing with people, these standards are formulated from the individuals idea of Jen or conscience and applied to each situation.

Chinese society is extremely sensitive to collectivity and obligation. It is the pivot on which the society functions and you cannot take the individual away from that sense of collectivism. Repaying ones obligations is a matter of loyalty. Relatives and friends go to extremes to honour these obligations, if they don’t they are considered disloyal and lose face.

Every society functions according to face it is the image one gives out in order to gain respect from others. In Chinese society however, face is crucial and differs according to the person one is talking to. If you observe a Chinese dinner party, the seating plan is arranged by hierarchy, every one knows their place and will act accordingly. They are expected to follow Li and act in an appropriate manner according to whom they are talking ie display the the right language, appropriate behaviour and status symbols. This is essential to the obligation network. At all times one has to use the right conduct to maintain one’s place in the hierarchical order. Loss of face not only affects the individual but the social network they belong to.

As an English teacher I am often given presents, this is to develop a relationship and in accepting them I become part of the obligation network. Ingratiating others either by compliments, presents or conforming to their opinions ensures the ingratiation favourable reciprocity.

In such a strict hierarchical society it is essential to maintain harmony and one of my biggest bones of contention was the fact none of my students were willing to criticise others opinions no matter how outrageous. In a group, if I asked a student’s opinion, the rest of the group would follow. This is because they are saving the face of others.

There are two facets to the Chinese character, one is the image one maintains in society, the other is the true character one reserves for family and close friends. With a foreign teacher, the need to save face for the Chinese as a whole is very important and explains why my students seemed so overtly patriotic. However, as the term drew to a close and my students trusted me, a more personal atmosphere developed and I was fortunate to know my students as individuals with their own views and attitudes.

The relentless drive for wealth is an important element in this society. It not only raises the prestige of the individual and pushes them higher up the social hierarchy but also enhances the family’s standing. Both of which are insuperable.

Of course there are other important factors. There is no catch net for the old, unemployed or ill. For any type of benefit one is competing with 1.2 billion people. If one wants to marry or begin a family one has to be pragmatic as opposed to emotional. It is all very well being desperately in love with 1,000 yuan a month between you but what do you do if you need to pay for an operation for yourself, your mother or your child?

A child’s education is of utmost importance because they are responsible for looking after their parents, in a sense the child replaces a private pension plan.

Children are pushed almost to the verge of insanity to study because they are competing for comparatively few University places and need a degree to obtain a decent job. They need a decent job to support their parents. Taking a degree in the arts will bring little money into the family coffer and is discouraged which is why the most popular courses are in business and finance. The respect gained through opening one’s business by the family is as motivationally strong as the money earned. Entrepreneurial ism is highly regarded and strongly encouraged. I won’t say anything about money being essential for bribery of government officials or police when beginning your new business.

My rationale for the old Western man and half his age Chinese beauty syndrome falls into two categories. First it’s universal, in every society there are rich or famous old men with ridiculously young and beautiful partners. Second, from a Chinese perspective it’s part of the obligation process. The man attains something he would never in a million years have at home, being neither rich nor famous. The woman attains something extremely difficult to achieve which is a visa to a developed country and the opportunity to support her family. As long as both partners are happy within this framework there’s no harm done.

The above merely scratches the surface, Chinese culture is far more complex. In the above summary I have not taken into account China’s turbulent political history, nor its status as a developing country.

Also, China has only recently opened to the world and I am, quite literally, an outsider. I am scrutinized because many have never seen a Westerner before. Views of Westerners are gained from Hollywood films or outdated history books. To see a foreigner in most other countries is a matter of course, here it’s an event.

I moved from the dormitory into an all Chinese building a month ago. The people here note my arrivals and exits, visitors and habits. They are interested in everything I do and some, I am certain, are not happy I am here. Even though I have registered with the police, my status is precarious and I could be ejected for no reason. I am treated with curiosity and suspicion. This is a part of living in China and to be expected.

I’ve realized that my perception and attitude towards Beijing depends on my frame of mind. I thought it was enriching and fascinating if I was happy and my life was going well. That changed however, if I experienced a series of negative incidents. If I was unhappy, I projected that unhappiness outwards and blamed it on the culture. It’s easy to lose perspective and forget positive elements when feeling dispirited.

In any country and culture you will find views and beliefs contrary to your own. I cannot judge 1.2 billion people, each with their own views and feelings, by a handful of English students. To reject or despise a culture because it is different to your own is nothing short of stupidity. I am a vegetarian yet my friends and family eat meat. Instead of condemning I respect their ethical difference and hope they follow suit.

Beijing is a microcosm of a vast country which to explore properly would take a lifetime. And as Wittgenstein rightly said the limits of your language are the limits of your world. You can’t expect to have a proper understanding of any culture if you don’t learn the language. I have been learning Chinese for nearly three months and the benefits are already evident. Without that knowledge, I am powerless and will continue to feel isolated and frustrated.

I’ve been in Beijing for just over a year and realize traveling broadens your mind only if you allow it to.

1 From Greek mythology king of Corinth forever compelled to push a huge stone up a hill. Once he reached the top it would slide back down again.