#expatchina

I would never claim to know exactly what it felt like to be the object of “Beatlemania” in the 1960’s, but after coming to China, I might have some idea of what it was like to be Ringo. Wherever my American friends and I go, we are offered jobs, asked to pose for pictures, handed free things. I have even heard stories of Westerners being asked to hold and kiss babies on the street, to serve as groomsmen and maids of honor at the weddings of complete strangers, and to sign autographs (although it seems likely this occurred because a friend was mistaken for 2 Chainz).

Such extreme lionization is obviously less common, but on a daily basis people at my gym smile and wave while doing sit-ups, complete strangers stare at me on the street—staring is not impolite in China—restaurants are sure to sit me and my friends near windows so we are visible to passersby, and the little kids who ride the elevator in my apartment building twist their fingers around in my arm hair. The latter, I must say, is perhaps the strangest thing that has happened to me, but I understand the curiosity—in China, body hair is about as common as people who don’t like Jeremy Lin. I am a respected spectacle, an object of fascination and veneration. And I can’t get enough of it.

This sort of treatment occurred to a lesser extent while I was training in Shanghai but has skyrocketed since I settled down in my host city and began work. I live now in Shenzhen, a city of somewhere around fifteen million people and a population density that ranks fourth in the world. Unfortunately, the census records for this and for other cities in China are rather dubious as the government has very nebulous definitions of residency, so these numbers are only estimates.

Shenzhen is in Southern China across the bay from Hong Kong. It grew up out of the jungle practically overnight after the government essentially decided that it would be nice to have a “Special Economic Zone” close to a "western city." There are parks and palm trees everywhere and the architecture and landscape are such that many buildings look like they could have been laboratories for the Dharma Initiative on LOST. The air is clean by Chinese standards, and the beach is quite close. It is a fine city, and unlike Shanghai or Beijing, very few westerners have made it here and even fewer are young and trying to party—this, in case it wasn’t already clear, explains the sort of treatment I’ve received.

The novelty that I present is compounded by the fact that everyone here speaks Chinese and only Chinese. As a result, the language I speak is just another differentiating factor along with my skin color, hair color, height, build, eyes, body hair, and finger nails (many Chinese shun the use of nail clippers and just let that shit run wild) that makes me look and sound nothing like anyone else in this town.

I am always reminded that I am different, but my uniqueness is most apparent when I go out at night. This is how my first night out in Shenzhen went down:

9:00pm: I join my other American friends at Coco Park, which is essentially a mall with night clubs instead of stores.

9:01pm: We buy enough beer and whiskey to kill Charlie Sheen for a grand total of four American dollars.

9:02pm: We pray that the booze is real—some reports suggest that up to 80% of Chinese alcohol is “fake.” “Fake” can mean anything from being made by bootleggers using basically the original recipe to being made with ethanol. I have heard reports of sealed bottles of “American liquor” turning to ice in the freezer. 

~9:30pm: We polish off the last of the booze.

9:45pm: The crew heads into the most Chinese club in town with the intention to “drop stacks of Maos.” I should qualify that last statement—in China, Chairman Mao’s face is on every single denomination of paper currency, from one to one hundred, so “dropping Maos” is often a bit less baller than “dropping Benjamins.”

9:46pm: The guys and I are pulled over to a table full of girls. They are literally squealing with excitement. Our heads swell up like Barry Bonds’. 

9:47-10:00pm: We pose for pictures with our new friends. The club photographer is sure to photograph us with all of the girls to post the pictures on their website.

10:01pm: We leave the table and scan the club for other Americans.

10:02pm: We confirm that we are the only people in the club with chest hair and/or an aversion to boney fish.

10:03pm: We complain amongst ourselves that the DJ’s selection of music, advertised online as “American Billboard Top 40,” is all from our high school days.

10:03:30pm: “Disturbia” by Rihanna comes on. All sins are forgiven.

10:03:45pm: We are pulled to a table full of Chinese guys. We laugh at one another’s attempts to speak Chinese and English.

10:04pm: An unreasonable number of shots are poured. We play a Chinese version of Liar’s Dice. At first, we think the rule is that the loser of each round is meant to drink. Then it seems that the winner of each round is meant to drink. Eventually, we realize that either a) in true Chinese fashion, we all drink together no matter what, or b) in equally Chinese fashion, there are no rules at all.

10:30pm: We offer the Chinese guys money for all the drinks. They wave us off.

10:45pm: The booze is finished. We exit the club.

10:47pm: Still riding high, we see a rare group of white girls.

10:48pm: We offer them our numbers.

10:48:01pm: They decline.

10:49pm: We head to another Chinese club to repair our bruised egos.

This sort of thing continues for the next couple of hours.

~2:00am: Pile into a cab.

2:01-2:05am: We sit in the cab and debate whether “Shifu,” the colloquial term for a cab driver that directly translates to “master worker,” is deeply respectful or hilariously patronizing.

2:06am: I remember how to say the name of the subway stop nearest my apartment, which is a five-minute drive east. The cab pulls away from the curb.

2:07-2:45am: The cab drives around aimlessly. We argue with the cab driver. He is sure that we are giving him the wrong address. We remain defiant.

2:50am: We realize that the cab driver thought we were saying “Jintian” station instead of “Jingtian” station. We are perplexed as to how he did not manage to figure this out. We give him the correct name.

2:52am: We arrive home. The cab costs about twenty times what it should. We demand a redress of grievances. To our shock, the cab driver agrees to let us off the hook for 20RMB (a little over $3).

2:53am: I collapse onto my bed (read: a piece of plywood covered in a sheet).

It was quite a night, and there have been many like it since--the club scene here is difficult to criticize. After growing accustomed to being so wanted by the most kind, generous, and polite people I have ever met, I shudder at the prospect of returning to New York, a place where, to put it lightly, I am considered about fifty times less debonair and am about fifty times more likely to get in some sort of trouble—at certain places in New York, to step on the wrong guy’s Nikes is tantamount to challenging him to a duel.

This sensation of being wanted is not limited to the social realms—it extends most notably into the professional one. In China, my labor, simply because I am American and fluent in English, is in remarkably high demand. I made the mistake of submitting my name to a website on which people search for American teachers, and I now receive a phone call at least twice a week. Sometimes a nursery school needs a full-time teacher. Other times a mother wants me to tutor her daughter for the SAT. I was once even recruited by a rich businessman who wanted a private live-in tutor for his son. I considered this briefly, but then I recalled a similar situation on Homeland in which Brody agrees to fulfill a similar role for the son of a known terrorist and returns to the United States brainwashed and depraved. Visions of myself returning to the States with an affinity for duck necks and man purses (“murses” are all the rage here) flashed across my mind, and I respectfully declined the offer. The pay for all these jobs is low by American standards but more than enough to live very comfortably—it costs, for example, about $1.16 to buy a live “silkie” chicken, which looks oddly similar to the bird in Pixar’s Up (Google it), and have a little old Chinese woman slaughter and pluck it right in front of you