Living the dream

It's taken me a while, but I've increasingly come to a simple conclusion- I hate China. I'm willing to accept that I may just hate Beijing, since in reality I haven't spent much time in other parts of the country, but I definitely hate something.

Let me start with the Beijing-specific.

Who builds a megacity, a seat of power over an exploding (I'll not say booming) economy, here? It's perched on the edge of the world's biggest desert. It's not at the mouth of a navigable river, or on a strategic port. It's far enough North that the winters are brutal, made worse by the complete lack of moisture to retain heat at night. It's in a valley that traps pollution, so when the sky isn't sleet-grey it's tinged with the browns and yellows of poisons.

The accent in Beijing is jarring. Spoken Chinese can hardly be described as a beautiful language, at least to our Western sensibilities, but even in China the Beijing accent is considered the worst. Imagine, if you will, taxi drivers who are incapable of understanding "Park the car in Harvard Yard", and need the proper accent applied to the sentence for a glimmer of recognition to flutter in their alcohol-shot eyes. Beijing-hua is best spoken with a nasal whine, with a liberal application of Rs to the ends of words.

There is disturbing poverty within a literal stone's-throw of the Great Hall of the People. I'll post pictures of the slums South of Tiananmen soon, but they're truly decrepit. This a block from the black-tinted windows of the black Audis with black government plates.

I live in a rich neighborhood, surrounded by expats and the wealthiest Chinese. Not 30 minutes ago I was in Jenny Lou's, a grocery store that caters to foreigners with its imported goods. The faceless and absent Mrs. Lou is a despicable bitch, however, and would gladly gut your children for an extra dollar's profit. Nevertheless, the place has a monopoly on Triscuits and Macaroni, so we foreign devils pay our king's ransom and smile as she twists the knife. I did not, you'll note, restrictively refer to myself and my foreign colleagues as 'capitalist running dogs' or 'capitalist roaders'. I think it should be clear why. I can understand why foreigners, far from home, would fork over wads of cash for longed-for luxuries. I cannot, however, understand why Chinese locals will pay the same obscene markups for vegetables, fruit, and meats that are no different from those at the Chinese grocer down the street. Watching the Chinese couple in front of me pay $150 for a grocery bill (an astronomic sum nearly equal to a month's salary for your average white-collar Beijing worker), I saw no other option but to dump my loose change into the cups of the beggars outside the store.

The spitting. I have no way of describing it for those of you who haven't visited. There are 3 sounds I'm unable to escape: construction, horns, and HAAAGHH. It's not polite spitting, it's lung-clearing, projectile expulsions. Sometimes a gentleman in a suit will stop on the sidewalk, plug one nostril with a finger, close his mouth, and exhale sharply.

If you're not dodging phlegm, you're dodging cigarette butts (still lit), taxi bumpers, and bicyclists on cell phones.

Beer is expensive and disgusting. Daria and I had drinks at my coworker James's place last weekend, and I felt great the next morning. I'd gotten used to Chinese hangovers, caused by impure alcohol with all its formaldehyde and God knows what. Drinking imported Western liquor, even in quantities, is healthy by comparison. Tsingtao has almost no flavor, no bubbles, no color, and no alcohol. Besides a mild, soapy aftertaste, what's the point? I'm simply unable to drink Chinese liquor. Some pansy-ass Chinese gentleman informed me it was because Western men weren't 'used to' such strong alcohol (the Chinese is more like 'capable of being used to'). I responded by pulling out a hip flask of scotch and inviting him to try what Western men drank. That's another thing- the cultural elitism. China is great, grand, and flawless. I understand that they're restricted in their exposure to media, but the logical disconnect between wanting to be like us and thinking that they're already far superior to us is sort of mind-boggling.

Environmental bombardment. The air hurts, the people make me sick, the noise is penetrating. When I went to Thailand, what amazed me the most was the skies. I'd honestly forgotten that sky was so blue and that clouds were so fluffy. Isn't that depressing?

I go on about the little things that I hate about living here, and it really is little things that build up to make it intolerable, but the worst is that I don't know what's good about this place- I just can't find it. The food can be good. There are occasionally things that are cool, like the red stars on granite, but then I realize that they're cool because they're symbols for things that are blessedly-absent at home.

I've had fun on some of the days when I've been a tourist. There are breathtakingly beautiful buildings and parks here, you just have to seek them out. The problem is that they're not integrated into the city. It's not like Central Park, or the Common, where you just walk through as you get out of the subway on your way to work. To get into the Summer Palace, or even pedestrian Chaoyang Park, you have to pay an entry fee and fight through the throngs of tourists. There is great beauty here, but it's all labeled as such and priced accordingly.

All of this, plus a lack of job satisfaction, an absence of good friends, and steadily declining weight (and health?) combine to make me strongly consider moving back home in the spring. I'm still weighing options, and I think I've found a good English teaching gig here, but I don't know whether the investment of time and mental health will pay off in terms of Chinese learned and resulting career benefits. As much as I was eager to get out of Boston, I think about it rather fondly from here. So besides looking at teaching jobs here I'm looking at lab positions in NYC, Boston, and San Francisco. I don't know how I'll make the eventual decision.