Life is Cheap

China. I just can't quite put my finger on it. Making assumptions about foreign culture is a complete waste of time when the subject country is China, it's far too complex and goes too far back to even try to work out. It always hits me that I am on the other side of the world when I'm singled out as the only Westerner at a table whilst everyone else banters away in Chinese, cracking jokes and toasting something or other before settling back down to their bowls, spitting out fish bones, whilst I can silently observe the army behind the 'next superpower' up close.



I just returned from a banquet that my local government official landlord and landlady threw for us tenants. It's Tuesday evening and for the first time in my life I have to conduct oral exams tomorrow with my English learners, and I am sat at a table with 12 Chinese people and an Aussie, necking baijo (rice wine) because it makes the host feel he has done a good job at throwing a party if his guests merrily stumble home. They won't take no for an answer and risk looking like a boring, stingy host. It's all about saving face. Reputation, reputation, reputation.



As a child I would have to finish what was on my plate before asking to leave the table. Dessert was for special occasions and wasted food meant children in Africa would starve. Tonight, like most RSVP occasions in China, platter after platter (of mostly some part of some animal - foot of the duck, throat of the pig) was presented to the table. Toasts were made in between mouthfulls, obliging everyone at the table to rise to their feet and listen to some slur about how we are all family, and if my bowl was nearing empty the Lazy Susan would spin in my direction and my bowl was topped up for me before I could say 'this MSG is killing me.' See, back in the UK, you can happily sit down to a meal, eat until you are full, not feel hungry again until at least four hours later, sleep like a log and not risk developing early diabetes. Not in China. They sprinkle the nerve shattering powder about like Russell Brand does with his bedroom commentary. Reasons why Monosodium Glutamate got kicked out of the UK include that it makes eating an addiction and hypes up your brain at the most inconvenient of times, like an hour before your alarm goes off.


Back at the table the dishes outnumber the mouths, following Chinese obsession of never been caught dead not having ordered enough food to fill everyone's grease-drizzled mouths. Spoiling their guests even more than themselves makes them visibly gleam with pride. In England, we might see this a symptom of only-child syndrome, 'look-at-me and see how I'm better at impressing you than everyone else at the table'. Well China is a country of only-childs, over a billion of them, sat with their poker faces on at every formal meal and opportunity to show off.



Of course I'm not ungrateful for this generosity, and neither is my appetite, but once you've been to one you've been to them all. Being a government official, my landlord only has to mutter a few promises to the restaurant manager and they trip over themselves to make him look like a king at little, if any cost to him.



Every Westerner's enemy in Yangshuo, the Big Bad Mr. Bing is a prime example of small town corruption. If you need an extension on your visa, this cartoon-like villain with a temper like a fire cracker is the man who you have to deal with. It helps to know he is an alcoholic and with a bit of schmoozing and heavy drinking nights paid for by one of the school principles will ensure that their foreign teachers will get his approval, when he is not suffering one of his notoriously hostile hang overs.


One half-caranaged table top, pissed-up government officials chucking back the baijo wheeling deals under the table and a national obsession with excess, am I really witnessing the recipe for the next super-power? So everyone seems to think...