Sound and Vision and Rickshaws

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As I write this, I'm in a cafe listening to a Pan-Pipe cover of 'I wanna know what love is' by Foreigner. I wasn't sure what to expect with the music here, but it is, perhaps unsurprisingly, largely pop or dance stuff. Most of it is Chinese, obviously, but if you are only half paying attention or you don't listen to the words, musically it could pass for generic Western pop music.

That's not to say American and European music hasn't infiltrated these shores to some extent. On occasion I will be walking down the street and hear something familiar being played in a shop or on the radio of a passing car. Shakira, Coldplay and Lady Gaga all seem to be fairly popular - and last week I heard Chelsea Dagger by The Fratellis in a bakery. It took me a while to realise what it was partly because it was so out of context and also because as far as I'm aware, no one in Britain listens to The Fratellis anymore so how they found their way into a bakery in a small Chinese city is beyond me.

As if to demonstrate that there is a demand for Western music, Bob Dylan played here last month (by 'here' I mean in China rather than Xiangyang) so clearly someone is interested in the stuff that we're more familiar with.

Films are the same deal. Despite a lot of peoples idea of China being some kind of closed, insular country (this was what I thought too until I agreed to live here for six months) there are a decent number of American and English films that make it over here. Avatar, Twilight and Harry Potter were all mentioned to me in the last week as being films that have been shown in the cinemas here. I've seen plenty of kids running round in Harry Potter branded clothes and was even asked by an excited 13 year old student the other day if I'd met Robert Pattinson, to which I inexplicably felt ashamed to have to look back at her hopeful face and say 'no.'

This, however, is far from being the strangest question so far. That award must go to a boy who asked me if I'd been to the World Cup in South Africa. I said no, and he looked disappointed and then explained that he thought I must have been because I look like I'm from there. This was a shock to me, but it was backed up first by a street food seller who told me, via a helpful translator who was sitting behind us, that I wasn't English, I was African; and secondly by the Robert Pattinson girl herself who asked me during a break in class, 'why are you brown and why is your hair like noodles?'

This may all seem offensive or in poor taste but I promise you it is all said with either affection or curiosity, or both, there is no malice at all. Political Correctness just doesn't exist over here and whilst I am firmly against what appears now to be the popular stance back home, in that I don't believe it has 'gone mad' and think it's actually a very good and important thing to have in a modern, mixed, multi-cultural society, and that we'd be far worse off without it. The difference here of course is that this society is neither mixed nor multi-cultural and as such, there just isn't much need for it. All of the questions I have been asked about the things I mentioned above have been asked with a genuine interest and often with respect, they are just questions and subjects that somehow seem taboo or disrespectful in Western society.

I may sound hypocritical here because I remember saying in a previous one of these about the lack of Political Correctness in Costa Rica and disliking the way that the use of the word 'Gringo' as a replacement for a persons name was dressed up as being part of the culture. I suppose this is the point, if somebody chooses not to learn your name or get to know you and then comes up to you and asks a question about the colour of your skin, your body shape or anything else like that, I think it's fair enough to deem it a little rude. But the same question asked by somebody who knows your name, and is showing a genuine respect when asking, even if the language used is probably seen as inappropriate by our Western standards, is fair enough I think. Although, as in Costa Rica, there is a tendency to use certain phrases to describe people who aren't present, who the speaker knows but you don't, so while I may find it harder to justify someone talking about 'the fat boy' or 'my friend with bad teeth', the childish part of me does still find it quite funny.

It was this same childish side that made me take a ride in a Rickshaw on Monday instead of walking the five minutes to the river. Sadly it was not quite the magical, fun filled ride I thought it would be, but that is probably my fault for letting my expectations of what is essentially a rusty bike with a canvas covering it, get out of hand. On the plus side though, it did join learning Mandarin, eating Goose feet (more on that in the future) and seeing Niagara Falls as things I have been able to tick off my Bucket List this year. Hopefully swimming in a foreign river will be next, that, or meeting Robert Pattinson.

Pura Vida

Dave

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