I did not take this picture. It is of China's national bird, the crane. However, I just saw one of these fly by my balcony, and I thought, "Huh. That is not a blue heron. What a spectacularly regal reminder that I am not in the States."Many other things remind me that I am not in the States, but I find myself forgetting that this is not how life has always been. As I was propelling my vegetables past two middle-aged customers toward a vendor's electric scale yesterday rather than waiting for her to acknowledge that it was my turn to have my produce weighed, I realized that I have adjusted a lot to life here. It helped that, long before I landed in Guangzhou, I had had access to the blogs of expats from around the world. Many spoke with sarcasm and disgust regarding the common spitting, pushing, and yelling tendencies of the people around them; I was so prepared to be deluged with these habits that, when I arrived, I was almost offended when I got through my first grocery shopping experience without having been spit on, trampled over, or deafened by my fellow shoppers. Were they treating me differently because I was a tall white girl?!
I enjoy noting how much cultural & social expectations alter how one can properly live her life in a community. I am not considered at all impolite for launching my veggie missile at the market vendor's scale; she would, in fact, be annoyed to have to wait for customers to sort out who came first or to have to reach out and put the vegetables on the scale herself. The system here works: whoever is nearest to the scale puts their vegetables on it, and the vendor swiftly prices it. As she bags the vegetables she has just weighed, another customer will prepare her purchases to be priced by putting them on the scale for the vendor. People are not constantly fighting to be first, and I see them make room for older, slower people. Yet, in general, opportunities are taken advantage of by whomever is nearest to take advantage (and this applies to everything, from grocery store "lines" to driving on the highway, which makes the otherwise slow pace of China suddenly transform into an adrenergic atmosphere of real life). On the one hand, it seems tremendously dangerous, and it certainly would be in the States where expectations do not make much room for such behavior. However, when everyone knows how to play this game, it creates a strange type of perceived efficiency and, for me, a break from formalities that make one forget over time that there are other ways to do things.
I never feel as though I can convey the many ideas that inspire posts like this one, but perhaps those of you who feel like you have some insight into what I mean can help me out by adding their thoughts to the comments section.
When I lived in Mexico, once nightfall came, in the suburbs, Mexicans would turn off their headlights as they approached a stop sign. The thought was, as they anticipated running the stop sign, they would better be able to spot the lights of an oncoming car and slow. Trouble was, everyone did it. So it sort of went full circle: With everyone doing it, you had to slow even if you didn't see oncoming headlights. The chaos worked itself out.
ReplyDeleteDuring the entire school year, an elementary school tested their fire preparedness by hosting fire drills every month. The kids had to line up and exit the building in an orderly fashion. The principal tested each drill, standing at the front door, stop watch in hand. They just couldn't quite meet the firedrill's prescribed time limit for emptying the building. Finally, on the last day of school when every kid was itching to have the whole summer off, the last school bell of the day rang. The entire school emptied in half the time of the fire drill. Maybe chaos is not chaos.
Dad