Monday, May 14

(We have added some pictures to the Sunday, May 13th, post)

Some cultural tidbits.

People—generally older people, sweep the streets and sidewalks all the time, using twig brooms.  The contrast between skyscrapers and brooms is vivid.  The city is FULL of children; someone told me Qingdao has a reputation as a family city (unlike Beijing, for instance).  And the children are obviously doted upon.  In addition, there are girls everywhere.  In pink, bows, tulle, long haired pony tails, and spangly shoes, hands lovingly held by grandmothers, grandfathers, mothers and fathers simultaneously.  There may be a generation of missing girls in China, but they are doing their best to adjust that balance.  It gives me some happiness to know that girls are no longer an endangered species, and that perhaps adoptive parents around the world sent a message to the nation about the value of daughters.

While waiting for the bus on Sunday in downtown Qingdao, I took this photo—a woman biking with a huge load on the back of her bike, accompanied by two children on another bike; China straddling centuries.

I also took this photo of a man in a blue work jacket; it looks like what I imagine the blue uniform of Communist China must have looked like.  I see everywhere older women wearing plain and simple button up jackets in dark fabrics that also seem reminiscent of a uniform; no longer required but maybe familiar and comfortable.

People park their cars on the sidewalks all the time!  There are many, many cars, and too few places to put them.  I can’t imagine driving in Qingdao—there is only the simplest form of road rules!  The bus drivers are constantly alert as they negotiate the bus lanes at each corner—drivers just shove the noses of their cars in anywhere they want!  Children float all over the car, totally unrestrained.  While sitting in traffic, we watched a child, clad in dance class attire, stand up and thrust her head out of the sunroof of the quite fancy car her mother was driving; this car had screeched into line ahead of our bus just seconds before.  When the traffic began to move, the little girl’s head remained stuck out of the sunroof—it made me gasp!  How far would they drive in that fashion?  And how soon would the mother screech into another tiny opening in the traffic, perhaps flinging her daughter to the ground?  I was a bit sickened!

Cars on the sidewalk!

Another funny sight was a series of cars parked on the down slope of the hill by our apartment, cars held securely in place by carefully placed rocks.  Presumably these are older cars, without an emergency brake system.  Not every car needed the rocks.

We have photographed some familiar places:  McDonald’s, Dairy Queen, Starbucks, and Subway.  The stores have peanut M & Ms, Dove chocolate, Head and Shoulders, Pringles, Jacob’s Creek Wine—and durian fruit, lychee nuts, dragon fruit or pitaya, yangmei (bayberry), and mangosteens.  This list doesn’t include references to fish or meat which can be visually off putting in Chinese markets!  I’m a vegan; I don’t have to do meat or fish!!

Familiar:

Less familiar:

I asked the incredibly nice, helpful, astute and fluent-in-English woman who is my go-to girl (I had to call her Sunday morning to ask who was this woman knocking at my door! [meter reader]) what the giant red Chinese characters, displayed in the City Hall greensward, meant.  She looked blankly at me, asked what characters, and then shrugged in disinterested ignorance.  Hilarious!  Imagine not knowing what the emblematic sign for your city meant!  Is that cultural or geographic—the effect of living in a city?

Got to love this version of a tiny city car—three wheels!

The Chinese have both paper and coin versions of the small pieces of their money—yuan and jiao and fen.  The fen or cent/penny has just about disappeared.  So if your total is 15.51 yuan, no expects you to pay the 1 fen.  A yuan = 16 cents today, so you can imagine how worthless the fen might be (1 Yuan = 10 Jiao = 100 Fen)  Julia is building a coin collection, and samples of each bill.  She is very aware of things having a cost, much more so than at home!  She is fearful of spending too much in any one purchase—such a worry wart!  (did Dad give her top secret instructions to keep Mama’s expenditures down?)  She loves the fact that a bus ride is free for her and only the equivalent of 16 cents for me!  I doubt she’ll let me take a taxi again (20 yuan, in comparison, a grand sum of $3.20!)—unless it coincides with her regularly repeated statement “I’m tired of walking” usually said 13 steps from the front door!

There are no dryers in all of China, I believe, evidenced by the laundry flying from every balcony.  This wouldn’t be so bad if only the fog would rise and the sun shine so that the laundry could dry!  I DO love a dry towel. 

I can’t explain this (although I have a theory; you knew I would) but I do not feel like I am in a country of 1 billion people none of whom look like me.  This feeling was almost overwhelmingly strong six years ago, when we adopted Julia.  But today, not so much.  I see a lot of variety in faces and skin color, although everyone has dark brown or black hair.  The line between me and them doesn’t feel like a barrier.  My theory is that I have lived with that Chinese face for six years and now it is part of my expectations of the world.  And, perhaps, having Julia has sensitized me to the presence of other Asians in my world; that is, that I see them more naturally and incorporate them into my world view smoothly, unconsciously, so that in fact the impression of difference has disappeared.  I hope so! Thus the world will blend as well as develop tolerance, as our children present us with seemingly unacceptable differences that we accept first because they are our beloved children.