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Published: October 21st 2009
I've been busy lately, but as opposed to the first month of utter chaos, I have managed to develop a daily schedule. I wake up and run in the morning, which due to the increasingly chilly weather has caused me to catch a cold. I have tutoring three days a week with a soft-spoken and very studious Chinese college student majoring in English. In my spare time I hang out at the local university basketball courts. I met a kid down there who, from what I can gather, spends more time playing basketball than going to class. I've been hanging out with him more and more, and he told me once (either in confession or, more likely, in the hope that I could offer him some assistance) that his dream is to go to America and get a job. He asked me if I thought that would be likely. Here, I think, is a good lesson in Chinese inter-personal relations. Instead of telling him that unless he spoke fluent English he would be lucky to get a job washing dishes, I replied:
1) I came to China because most American college graduates can't find jobs anymore; but
2) there are lots of communities in big cities where people don't speak any English!
I realize I probably instilled some false hope in the guy, but it's very difficult to be honest here. As with most everything else, inter-personal relations function in the exact opposite of how they do in the US. The better you know someone, the less frank you become with them, because the more your opinion matters to them. At least that's how it seems to me so far. In any case, my friend seems eager to learn, and I told him that when we hung out, he could talk to me in English and I'll respond in Chinese.
I got initiated into his circle of basketball-playing friends, and we started going to the gym together to play pick-up. At the request of my father, I'll dedicate the rest of this post to describing the debacle that is Chinese basketball.
American basketball, for the uninitiated, is essentially a pissing contest. There's a lot of shit-talking, yelling, and basically any form of tough-guy posturing you can imagine. And if you make a mistake, you can expect to hear about it from whoever thinks they're the best on the court.
In the name of hyperbole, I will declare that Chinese pick-up is exactly the opposite. Sure, there are a few who like to argue over foul calls, but that lasts for about 5 seconds at the most. There's absolutely no chest-thumping or in-your-face trash-talking whatsoever. Most of the games are played in complete silence, except for the occasional foul call, or "Hao qiu!" (literally, "good ball", but meaning anything from "nice play" to "no foul" to "ok").
The only similarity to American pick-up is that defense is practically non-existent. There's a lot of pushing, grabbing, and traveling that goes unnoticed. Picks are usually set in the manner of someone trying to start a bar fight, and always on the ball; when I try to set picks off the ball, I usually get confused stares. A drive consists of four or five steps, a lot of twirling, and some kind of crazy behind-the-back or over-the-shoulder no-look pass to someone left criminally open under the basket, due to the aforementioned lack of organized defense.
Most pick-up games are half-court; the reason, they claim, is that there are too many people, but I think the real reason is that they don't want to spend the energy necessary to run full-court games. Instead of water breaks, there are cigarette breaks. All half-court games are 4-on-4, which is the worst numbers for a pick-up game; too crowded for half court, too sparse for full-court, but that's how they do it. The ball is never checked; after a basket, as soon as the offensive team has the ball in their hands, they can start. I do think you have to pass the ball in, though. I've gotten some weird looks (but never a comment, God forbid) for habitually checking the ball after a basket. They think I'm giving it away to them.
Many of my impressions might just be slanted because most of the basketball players here are terrible. But there are a few good ones, who know about switching on picks, staying with your man, playing defense off the ball, and spacing. I did see a full-court game the other day; my new friend is on a team in a school-wide tournament which I think is for bragging rights between dormitories. Fouls are blatant, and unless it's underneath the basket during a shot, it doesn't get called. I think here in China is where LeBron's famous "crab dribble" originated. But these kids at least seemed to know what they were doing. His team had Denver Nuggets jerseys with their dorm's name emblazoned in Chinese on the back. I'm going to see if I can get one of them. My friend's team won decisively, due to the efforts of their center, who was the only one on the court showing any outward signs of excitement. They celebrated with a round of cigarettes for all.
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illNANA
non-member comment
haa! i love it... sounds like i never wanna play basketball in china, shit talking is my favorite part!