Say Something Nice

I feel like I've been a little hard on China lately in my posts. Yes, the signs are ridiculous; yes, my lungs hurt; yes, my students have the stupidest names; but there are lots of good things about living here, and so to copy my sister-in-law's recent blog entries (10 things to be thankful for in China), I will spend some time saying some nice things about China. Okay, deep breath (cough, cough), here it goes:

Snack food: The food in China is good overall. It's greasy, but full of veggies and fruits--in season and local, so that's nothing to complain about. But we've been digging all the crazy snack foods. Crackers come in a staggering variety of flavors, and while we usually stick to simpler flavors like sesame and black pepper, we can't help but sample the chicken curry or mexican beef or italian meat pizza flavors. The Chinese also have a propensity for seeds and I'm hooked on cinnamon-flavored watermelon seeds and salty roasted lima beans.

Street food: This is a separate category from snack food. What I'm appreciating here is the accessibility of food. When you are hungry, there is always something fast and delicious nearby. I love the men who sell sweet potatoes that they roast over oil drums they wheel around the city. In the summer there was melon on a stick. Kebabs of all sorts are on every block along with a boazi shop, selling fluffy rice dough balls filled with pork, greens, root vegetables, or red bean paste. And there are convenience stores everywhere, so you can wash your street food down with bottled water, all manor of iced teas, milk tea, coffee milk, fizzy orange juice, or cola.

Old people: Chinese old people rock. A few of them are grumpy, but man are they healthy. The look twenty or thirty years younger than they are and are out and about doing everything. In the very Chinese neighborhood next to ours, the retired people sit in circles on these little tiny squatting stools and just talk or shuck beans or play cards. They stay social and active and live with their families, so it is so unlike a depressing nursing home. Nice work, China.

Babies: They are so cute sometimes it almost makes me cry. And they wear these awesome split-pants (no need for diapers--what a waste), and while it's gross when they pee in the middle of the bank line, they look really cute with their butts hanging out. But what I don't understand is why the Chinese bundle up their kids ridiculously in winter (like now even though it is almost 70 degrees, it's November, so there's a dress code), they have this crazy cold breeze right in their crotches. Also, the Chinese adore children. They are always giving candy or toys to Winston when we go out with him or play games with him or teach him Chinese. And while he sometimes can't deal with some of the old ladies who get in his face (he swats at them if they're not careful), he always seems to find himself an adopted grandfather whom he will adore for a few short minutes (makes me jealous).

Bikes: Man I love riding my bike in Shanghai. I love living in a bike society. Stupid Seattle with its spandex-clad white guys, riding to work like it was the freaking tour-de-france, had nothing on Shanghai. Everyone rides a bike everywhere. It is a vehicle; it is a tool; it is a part of life. There are big bike lanes everywhere, fenced off from the dangerous streets. People haul stuff on bikes; people take their babies on bikes; even the mailman rides a bike. And all the bikes are pimped out with racks and baskets and fenders. I love that it's not a status symbol; it's totally functional. It's not a statement (I hated when I told people I rode my bike to work in Seattle and they would say "good for you.") It's not excercise. It's life, and it will be hard to go back to driving a car when we move back to the states.

Laundry: It doesn't matter how small your apartment is or how poor you are, everyone in Shanghai has a washing machine. No laundry mats exist. You have this little washing machine in the bathroom and you hang everything out the window to dry. I never want a dryer again. Think of the energy being saved by not encouraging 18 million people that they need to dry their clothes electrically. Sure our clothes end up smelling like pollution, but we've come to expect nothing less.

Is that enough? These are the things I will miss about Shanghai when we're gone. In many ways, even though this is one of the biggest, most industrialized cities in the world, life is simpler here. We only go where our legs can take us. We only eat what we can afford to bring in from local farms. We can only wash a week's worth of clothes at a time, so our wardrobes are smaller. We can only say hello and goodbye and thank you and sometimes that's all the interaction we need to have. We smile a lot when we don't understand and the Chinese smile back. Our apartment guard calls us friend and a bottle of beer costs twenty-five cents. I guess there isn't much to complain about.