Chinese Humor

A few days ago I laughed. Hard. I laughed at something I would have felt bad about laughing at until I read Lin Yutang's book My Country and My People. This is one of those books that, as I read, I want to write down every other line. If highlighting were a habit of mine, my entire copy of the book would fluoresce. It is not a book that speaks to all generations of all people; it is a book that speaks to someone desirous of understanding Chinese culture, to have it described in just the right words, to distinguish what of their own experience in China is common and what is unique. With every passage, either a knowing smile sneaks across my face, or an appreciative laugh erupts from the depths of my enlightened soul, or a peaceful understanding calms sources of tension I could not acknowledge until they were (at least partially) soothed.

So, the other day, I laughed, but not while I was reading the book. I laughed because I had been on the bus to one of my favorite shopping centers, looking forward to nothing as much as the overcooked sweet potatoes and steamed corn that awaited my arrival. Potato-and-corn vendors are always at the ready at this particular bus stop (whereas, at other bus stops, maybe there will only be fruit vendors today and egg wrap vendors tomorrow, but no caramelized potato vendors until Saturday). As I stepped off the bus, I spotted a vendor... running. Accelerating his wheelbarrowed contraption, equipped with an industrial trash can that served as an oven for his potatoes weighing down the front, he picked up speed despite his distracting glances over his shoulder. He was not alone. The fruit vendors, the purse lady, ... everyone but the beggar who was not there waiting for a bus was running. The reason soon showed itself: a police wagon had shown up on the scene along with my bus. It was large enough to collect all of the vendors, or just one with his goods. The police took off at a half-assed run (one that would earn any rower on my dad's team a reputation for unmitigated laziness were it engaged during practice), probably just to make sure that the vendors kept going.
At all of this, I only gave one of those intensely nasal releases of breath that count as laughter in a broad sense of the term, but without vocalization, it was hardly true laughter. It was when I crossed the street that I really laughed. To cross the busy street and get to the shopping center, I actually have to go underground. The time it took me to take the escalator down, walk across, and take another escalator up was ample enough for the police to do a u-turn and pester the vendors on the side of the street to which I was headed. There, a woman was selling maki rolls from a plastic tub (a very popular method of cheaply selling this beloved street food in Zhuhai). If I may translate the dialogue from the scene (我的中文不太好， 可是我要试试给你当翻译。):
Officer: Hurry! Get outta Dodge! (Yes, I am taking some freedoms with my interpretation.)
Sushi Lady: Ok.
... Sushi Lady continues her transaction with a customer, unhurried.
Officer: Quickly! (Hand motions are now being used to indicate the direction and swiftness with which she is expected to move.)
Sushi Lady: Yes, yes, quickly. (She sounds akin to an American husband who is used to placating his wife with "yes, dear"s and "I'm coming"s even while he continues to switch through TV channels and maintain a nice glaze about the eyes.)
... Another customer comes before she ends the transaction with the first. She gives a Vanna White wave over the selection of swirled seaweed and rice she has to offer. No rush from where she stands.
The vocal police officer becomes increasingly agitated, probably because he is the most senior-looking of the three who are standing impatiently near her cart. A fourth officer is menacingly tapping his toes while he oversees the dismantling of a larger illegal display of furniture.
While agitated and menacing, the officers were also being kind. They used simple enough language that I could understand everything -- and nothing they said was inappropriate nor unnecessarily harsh (which is saying a lot considering what people can sound like here when they are in a good mood).
This, by the way, was when I finally laughed. I didn't look directly at the officers while I did so; I wouldn't want forgiving officers to lose any face due to a silly American girl. I laughed because two things from the book I had been reading on the bus were manifesting themselves before my eyes in a characteristically Chinese way. (1) Chinese humor, as described by Lin Yutang. He says it is an aspect of Chinese humor that laws are not abided by unless people have internal motivation to do so. As long as laws are a matter of common sense put into official language, they are generally respected; where the laws don't seem to make immediate sense, they are brushed aside by the populace, only to be remembered when a car full of angry officers come barrelling down the road. Lin Yutang says the Chinese people (at least of the 1930s) laugh at laws, and at the lighter attempts to enforce them. Other people laughed, so I let myself laugh, too. I did not laugh at the fear in which the runners lived every working day of their lives, nor did I laugh at the ineffectiveness of laws put in place to protect consumers and business people. I laughed at the truth of an observation about a culture made 80 years ago and still playing itself out in all its same vivid detail today. It was beautiful. I was watching not a product of recent economic roller coastering, but of hundreds or thousands of years of a culture blooming.
(2) Regards one petal on that bloom: pacifism. That is the term Lin uses to describe the method Sushi Lady used. What can one do to someone who is reasonable and agreeable in words, but clearly does not let their words have any impact on their actions? I am sure someone like Machetedan (a frequent and absurdly amusing commenter on my blog) could think of quite a few things that a person could stoop to in order to make someone's words and actions line up as desired, but when the officer appears to want to engage in nearly as much pacifism as the transgressor, options are limited.

I am always sure that I am completely inept at conveying the beauty of the situations I find myself in, but I hope, with every entry, that your imagination can fill in and smooth over my story-telling deficiencies.

Since I have just received an email that brings closure to another story (and would otherwise be waiting very impatiently for a much anticipated phone call), I will tell one more quick anecdote. I was at the post office an hour ago. I stopped in with no purpose; I had been walking by reading my insightful little book, and thought that if I stopped in I may see something... inspiring. Anyhow, I heard a song that I have come to like very much but have no way of finding easily -- except to ask a Chinese person to find it for me. At first, I just walked out of the post office, thinking, "how will I ever find that song?!" and then ran back in to ask the lady at the counter what song was playing before it ended (which would require me to explore deeper depths of my grammatical knowledge of Mandarin than I felt like revisiting at the moment -- whereas asking "what song is this" and pointing up to the speakers I thought were overhead was quite easy). She didn't know... and neither did her coworker... and neither did any of the three students printing out homework in the back of the post office. No one knew this song I had heard playing for weeks on the radio! But one girl, Emily (a name that marks women of exceptional kindness in my life), offered to find the song on the web for me and email it to me if I would just give her my email address. While I wrote this, Emily came through for me and sent me an excellent copy of the song (YAY!). I'll see if I can post the song...