At Play in Xi'an's Arcades

[Photos all available HERE]

If not for Street Fighter II, it is highly unlikely that I would be in China today. This is no joke. Those of you who remember the game, will distinctly remember its immersive, character-specific backgrounds. Blanka, the electrical Brazilian beast, hailed from a stage that resembled the Swiss Family Robinson tree house. Dhalsim, the Indian holy man, fought in a temple. Guile’s, the American GI, was cheered on by other soldiers—one of whom made ambiguously obscene hand gestures. Then there was Chun-Li, the high kicking Chinese. Her stage was a vibrant Chinese street scene; chickens hung downwards from shop windows, men bicycled past, vendors squat in store fronts. Of all the stages, this was the one whose fantasy I most longed to experience. It was my first real impression of China. Fifteen years later, here I am.

Street Fighter II is still available and still played in Xi’an’s videogame arcades. During the past month, me and a few other (male) teachers at my school became obsessed with playing arcade games on our breaks from class. It was here we rediscovered the magic of our old favorites and the charms of many new ones.

Videogames are a sort of art. They may lack the emotional heft of an ambitious movie or book, but compared to Iron Man or the latest Clive Cussler novel, they hold up well. Consider one shooting game in particular wherein you and a partner play X-Files-style agents investigating a haunted museum: It starts simply enough with a few mummies popping up here and there, old Greek amphora flying toward you. Then the mummies increase, then you are surrounded, then totem poles begin lobbing pumpkin-things at you, then you are flying through a mining tunnel, then you are being swarmed by bees, then you are being chased by the Sphinx. . . .the entire game has the quality of a fever dream and it’s a thoroughly entertaining experience.

There are two major arcades along Luomashi—the pedestrian promenade near Walmart—and, if shooting mummies or pummeling a multinational cast of characters isn’t your thing, there are a multitude of other options. The major draws seem to be a game where four unallied players sit around a large table-cum-tv-screen and shoot at fish. There doesn’t seem to be much more to it than that and yet it draws crowds. In addition to the players—mostly men in their twenties and thirties—there are girl-friends and large numbers of unconnected spectators.

Of the two arcades, Tom’s World is the more varied and enjoyable. Its crowd is much younger: Parents with small children, groups of young kids, and teenagers on dates all mill about. In addition to the games mentioned, it has basketball tossing games, whack-a-mole games, drum sets, Dance-Dance Revolution, skee-ball, claw crane games, and many other fun-for-all-ages games. All games require tokens and cost about 1 yuan per game—a few more complicated games cost 1.5 yuan.

The other arcade Can Lan Yang Guang (whose mouthful of a name translates to something like Happy Sunshine Fun City) is less kid friendly. It’s darker and dingier with less variety of games. Whereas Tom’s World is all bright tones and high ceilings, this place resembles a series of underground tunnels. Colors are black and muted. People are packed together at close quarters. The crowd is older—no children on the day I visited. Instead it there is an abundance of older boys with sparse growths of mustache and girls caked in make up. I made my way through the place feeling as though I might stumble into a back room with a Russian roulette game in progress of be greeted by a tout offering to sell me drugs or endangered animals. Overall, a less wholesome feel.

Clearly, my sympathies lie with Tom’s World and, during the past week, a number of my work breaks have been filled with visits. Typically I settle in at the Street Fighter IV game only to be repeatedly out-matched by a series of small children who take turns at beating me, their laowei compatriot.

The only downside of these places are the slot machine style games whereat lonely, stone faced men and women plop in coin after coin. Just like pull tabs in a bar or the Las Vegas casinos, these games seem a bit dreary and dispiriting. Avoid them, however, seek out the bright colors of other games, and you will find yourself re- experiencing a little of the youthful pleasure such places once provided.

Kashgar

“I hate the Han, I hate the way they treat the Uighurs. They’re colonizing them. I’m so glad that I’m living in Urumqi—not “Wulumuqi”—I have all Uighur students. They’re much kinder, much friendlier. Han are rude. They spit, they cheat you. They don’t care about culture.”

The German said all this to me as we waited for our noodles. He was—perhaps unsurprisingly—tall, blond, clean-cut, and impeccably well spoken in English. We’d met at the hostel and were going over the details of an impending trip to the mountains. He’d been living in China for ten months now (two in Urumqi) studying on a scholarship. He was fantastic in speaking Chinese and Uighur and was passionate about the latter. His jeremiads against the Han struck me as extreme; his ability to zealously commit made me feel old. I felt inklings, stirrings of what he was getting at, but nothing sparked such partisanship in me.

“Well,” I put in, “I have to agree about culture. I came to China to experience the culture. I didn’t expect things to be the same now as one hundred years ago, but I also didn’t expect to see . . .well, no culture. And, because they don’t seem to care for their own culture, they have very little respect for other’s cultures. My students know little and care little about minority peoples.”

“Yes! And here you see so much culture. You feel it. I always try to use uyghurce when I speak. It’s a sign of respect. But the Han—the fucking Han—they don’t even try to learn. They don’t mix . . .”

Imperialism With Chinese Characteristics

Every large country—and most small countries—have sizeable numbers of people who exist at a remove from the national culture. Northern Canada is an Inuit autonomous zone, swaths of Russia’s southern regions are divided among various minority peoples, Brazil’s Amazon region is awash with diverse tribal groups, and the US has hundreds of reservation lands governed by special laws; even somewhere like Mexico that lacks such special regions is full of minority peoples speaking their own languages and raising their children up in cultures distinctly separate from that seen on tv and in the halls of power. And most, if not all, of these groups suffer from abuse of their human rights.

My German’s views were nothing special. Every minority has its outside spokespeople—academics and activists—who champion the uniqueness of the culture and castigate the oppressive state that rules over it. When it comes to China, Tibet gets most of the attention. In the US, it’s fashionable to sport “Free Tibet” t-shirts and stickers, but the realities of the situation, both there in Xinjiang, seem muddier: Small, weak countries with no access the sea, small populations, limited water-supplies, and huge powerful neighbors are rarely fully independent. Were a place like Xinjiang free tomorrow, it would become just another zone where the US, Russia, China, and Pakistan compete for influence. One minority group would be pitted against another. Regions with the most resources would receive money and attention. Regions with nothing would be ignored.

What China provides is stability. It builds roads and electrical grids, it establishes bank branches and doles out credit to rural areas. East coast money flows in to fund massive mining and oil ventures that offer jobs where no jobs had been. By incorporating Xinjiang in a national market it creates more opportunities for local farmers to sell their produce. Through infrastructure and security, it encourages tourism.

That’s on the one hand. With Chinese money, however, flows Chinese people. Millions. Business in China is all about connections—friends getting jobs for friends, cousins looking out for cousins. (As the saying goes, when a man becomes emperor, even his pets become ministers.) This isn’t conducive to promoting minority involvement. Newly created jobs go to Chinese. Government policies to boost wages in the region encourage settlement by Han.

A thousand years ago, deserts meant something. The Silk Road was nothing but oasis towns and wilderness connecting the Chinese in the east to Central Asia in the west. Now half the population of Xinjiang is Han Chinese—mostly concentrated in the eastern half, centered on the capital of Urumqi. The traditional names of Silk Road towns—Kashgar, Yarkand, Hotan—are unknown to Chinese who have renamed them—Kashi, Sanche, and Heitan, respectively. Thousands of years of culture is disappearing.

I’ve met a good number of Chinese by now, mostly twenty-somethings, who were born and raised in Xinjiang. By and large they have no interaction with the Uighurs; they might know how to count numbers and say “Hi,” but little else. Many are unaware of the traditional names of cities they live in.

I spent most of my time in the Uighur part of Kashgar, but it was clear that the People’s Park represents the dividing line between populations. The park is full of old Chinese doing precisely the same activities you would see in Xi’an—singing, strumming instruments, playing cards, doing various exercises. Further south the businesses and restaurants become more recognizably Chinese. The architecture is newer and the buildings—shopping malls and banks—hint at East coast money and aesthetics. In the morning, you see restaurant staffs gathered together for their morning pep-talks. There is suddenly more public spitting and urination. At night there is line-dancing and basketball. All those involved are Han, any Uighurs visible stand off to the side and watch. Policemen and soldiers patrol. You are wholly back in China.

And the locals don’t like it. There have been sporadic uprisings over the years and last year, in 2009, the most major in a generation occurred. Large-scale rioting broke out in Urumqi with gangs of Uighurs spilling out from the city’s shanty-towns and attacking Chinese. In the following week a series of pokings and stabbings led to rumors of Uighurs roaming the city, injecting Han with AIDS-laced hypodermics. Han began organizing vigilante groups to mete out vengeance in the Uighur parts of the city. The army was sent in and the city put on curfew. Facebook—thought to be used in the organizing—was banned in China.

Powerful states like the US or China seek to impose order on their territories and (if possible) on the world. Many of the problems states face is that the world is not always as they would like and many peoples do not want their lives altered so that some outside culture can “make sense” of them. Xinjiang presents China with this problem.

A thousand years ago there were “Uighurs.” They were one of many different groups (and, really, their history can be traced back twice as far), but as to what being a “Uighur” truly means in modern China, the question is more vague. The range of faces and styles is vast, suggesting that the category is rather broad—the music, the food, and the dress are all a mix of different Central Asian traditions. The only true commonality is the language, and even this has regional variations—perhaps because many other minority groups in the region, like Tajiks, use the language as a lingua franca. But the Uighur spoken today is hardly the Uighur spoken in the 11^th century.

The quest for what is authentically “Uighur” is a mirage. China claims to have dominated the region for centuries, Uighurs can point back to an ancient kingdom of their own and various periods of fleeting independence in the last century, but it’s all posturing. The connection between past and present is mutable. Much of the world is an endlessly mixing hodgepodge of tribal groupings. One group intermingles with another and becomes something new. Time passes, but the location remains the same. In the end, there is but one irreducible fact as the Uighurs see it: They are from here, the Chinese are not.

Thus, for all these signs of having dug in, there is a sense among the Han of being deep in Indian Country, of holding down the fort, of pacifying the land. It’s very uncomfortable to watch one people slowly drown out another people, but it would be foolhardy to think the process unique or even particularly bad compared to how other empires have gone about it.

Uighur Culture

In the last year, the central government has poured large amounts of money into the region and talked up its attempts to improve the economy. I flew into the city on the one year anniversary of the riots and it is no coincidence that the day’s China Daily contained a front page article discussing efforts to make Kaghar into a special economic zone, complete with quotes from approving locals.

The most apparent manifestation of this largesse, however, is the nearly complete destruction of Kashgar’s old city. Old, Islamic style building have been torn down and are set to be replaced by new apartment blocks which the government promises to construct using traditional architectural motifs. In the meantime, though, there is nothing but dusty rubble and scattered ruins. The impression is creates is of Grozny more than the Silk Road.

Such destruction from on high has not sat well with locals and on Friday, watching the crowds—hundreds upon hundreds of utterly unChinese faces—flow into the Id Kah mosque for prayer, I was reminded of how much the government fears gatherings. For centuries, leaders throughout the Middle East and Central Asia have been wary of the mosque and the marketplace. Men come together as one to pray and trade; they complain, they talk, they surge. Revolutions start here. Yet such resistance will likely produce diminishing returns.

What then is this culture that is passing away, whittled down, marginalized into nothingness?

As I’d explained to the German, I’d come to see “culture,” so I wish I could give more details—more local flavor—but I was hardly here long enough. I didn’t go to weddings or parties or visit people’s houses. Mostly I did a lot of walking, looking, listening and tasting. Much of my time was spent at little street restaurants chatting pidgin with cooks, wandering along the street, or making my way through parks and markets.

Generally, I was reminded of Turkey—well, the poorer parts of Turkey. The rhythms of speech, many of the faces, and the gestures were largely similar. Even the advertising was similar: Towering over the central square was a billboard for Ulker, a major Turkish candy company. Stores selling suits had display images featuring cast members from Kurtlar Vadesi, the Turkish mafia soap opera.

Woman dressed in the more colorful versions of the moderate Muslim style (long dresses or coats and colorful headscarves), but some covered their faces with purple-mesh, or wore heavy, brown coverings over their entire bodies. The men typically wore slacks and white shirts; usually a little hat sat a top their heads. Overall, the street life had a far more masculine flavor than in China. Women were present, but men, large groups of them, gathered together in the squares, on the streets, looking down from second-floor café balconies, and in front of shops.

The people I saw also seemed older. There were far less twenty-somethings out and about. Whether this was because they were at work, in school, or had migrated to larger cities, I can’t say. At the city’s main bookstore, I struck up a conversation with one young Uigher. He had just finished university in Korla and was now preparing to take a civil service exam. Most of our conversations revolved around salaries, electronics, and the promise of life in America. The picture he painted of Kashgar was less than enthusiastic. Opportunities were lacking.

Such chats aside, my main focus tended to be the food—something whose experience language gaps cannot diminish. Uighur food could be fairly summed up as meat and bread. It wouldn’t be totally fair, but it would be largely true. Kebabs are the heart of the Uighur cuisine and Lord are they good! Fat chunks of meat soaked and coated in a spiced-egg marinade are wood-oven baked. The result is a smoky-flavored meat with a light, crispy crust. The meat itself is juicy and flavorful; always four pieces per skewer, a combination of fat, liver, and two standard cuts.

As for bread, Uighurs produce, large disks of bread with raised edges resembling empty pizza crusts. On the flat circle are stamped and intricate designs. Sprinkled over the bread for flavor are a variety of spices—the most prominent ones being sesame seeds and thyme. Every street seems to have at least one—if not multiple—vendors. Also offered are bagel-shaped (and bagel flavored) rounds of bread that, since vendors had no ready name, I will refer to as “bagels.”

Side by side with the bread vendors are fruit vendors. Everywhere you turn there are carts and stands overflowing with fruits. The region has some of the freshest, tastiest melons I have ever eaten. A few would be recognizable in any western supermarket, but the variety extends far wider to encompass all hues and textures. Small crowds gather around, waiting for their turn as vendors dexterously carve up and hand out slices.

Off the street entrees include noodle dishes. The most famous—the one I’d learned to say on day one of my Uighur language classes in university—was laghman. This is a combination of green peppers, mutton, tomato, and onions, poured over noodles. It’s simple and satisfying. More intimidating is dapanji, a dish of spicy chicken chunks and potatoes. Rather than rice, one mixes long, flat noodles into the dish. Small game hens are also very popular. Fish, though troublingly far from any major river and ocean, is also available in battered and fried (but not de-boned!) form.

Uighur food is a mélange of different, regional cuisines. On one street, I came across a vendor selling poruska, egg rolls covered in raw sugar and filled with fatty meat and onions. The combination—to my palate—worked as well as it sounds, but the obvious Russian influence intrigued me. (Sure enough Xinjiang has long been an area for Chinese-Russian competition and the areas around the Ili Valley have modest Russian populations.)

Other borrowings include samsas—bread filled with meats and other stuffings before being oven baked—and pollao, fried rice cooked with onions, carrots, and cumin.

For drinks, a version of tea, slightly stronger than Chinese varieties is the standard, but milk too is plentiful in Kashgar. Little stands sell it by the glass and, at night, ice-cream vendors set up here and there, portioning-out fresh-made cups. In the countryside the milk is fresh and un-pasteurized—outside the city, my tea was repeatedly softened with yak’s milk.

And, during my trip, I drank a lot of yak’s milk . . .

Outside the City

Living among Han Chinese, it’s easy to forget that the People’s Republic of China is a “multi-ethnic state” with more than fifty different minority peoples “fairly” represented. It’s necessary to visit the areas where these people live to be reminded. Tourist site after site contains informational plaques attesting to the multi-ethnic character of the state and recounting the conscientious steps the Party has taken to improve or promote buildings and sites of particular importance to minority groups. The feeling such a heavy-handed message produces, of course, is the opposite—constantly shouting how stable a society is tends to the best indication something is amiss.

Going outside Kashgar, along the Karakorum Highway towards the Pakistani border, gave a very good sense of how minority life is lived in China. The region is populated by Kirghiz and Tajiks. The former are more Asian-looking while the latter, as the pattern of their speech would suggest, as more Persian. Both peoples tend to live in yurts and both have faces reddened by high altitude wind and sun. Clothing-wise people—especially far away from population centers—wear combinations of the traditional and the modern. One man will be wearing a peaked, white Kirghiz hat while his friend’s head is shielded by a baseball cap marked with a Japanese-designer’s name.

Along the roads, Kirghiz wait for passing cars to stop whereupon groups of men and children swarm. Most commonly on offer are little, polished, translucent stones that glow orange and green when held to the light. None speak much Chinese or Uighur. Their world is concentrated around their mountain valleys. In a country where social mobility is largely a product of success on the national gaokao test (administered in Chinese) the chance of escaping one’s conditions is less than hopeful.

Tajiks seemed more urbanized in so far as they concentrated around the “city” of Tashkurgan. Here arid mountain landscapes give way to a verdant expanse of valley with the town in its center. The fields around it are dotted with yurts, lowing cows, and the smoke from small fires.

In the town we—the Uighur-phile German, a Frenchman, and myself—wandered around in search of diversion. There was little. The city center consisted of three or four streets lined with dusty stores offering clothes, snacks, or farming supplies. A couple of hotels, a bar, and a pair of restaurants—little else. The most imposing building in the town (aside from police and military installations) was the local cultural center and museum. We headed over to it and entered into a small lobby where two men were busily playing a game of ping-pong.

One of the men, Kaftan, could speak English. He had studied in Beijing and now worked as the local union representative for the city. There were, he explained, something like sixty different unions in this small town. By “unions” he meant something similar to “work units”—every worker in a particular job banded together for the purpose of government oversight. He was clearly bored with the opportunities his town had to afford and peppered us with questions about how he might start a tourism business.

By nightfall the street were empty—the only noise coming from a single bar and the occasional moo from the field.

We’d chosen to stay in the cheaper of two hotels near the entrance to town. Our hotel had a main building where tour groups stayed, its concierge desk manned by an attractive Han girl with whom me and the Frenchman flirted. Our room, however, was in a newly constructed, two-story plasterboard building adjacent. The whole place smelled like cigarettes and the desk was managed by a middle age Han man with a large mole on his cheek.

That night we lay around watching Germany lose in the World Cup. The following day we visited Karakol Lake. The three of us made it halfway up a little mountain before the German grew tired and decided to head back down. He’d been grousing all day about various unanticipated inconveniences the trip had thrown in our path and, needing a break from complaints, I opted to remain where I was. The Frenchman kept going all the way up, until he was nothing more than a dot on the peak of the mountain. The wind at this altitude hit into you like fists. I found a rock that blocked me from the worst of the buffeting and gazed up at the deep blue sky above. Even from my halfway vantage, I could see the entire valley and it’s surrounding mountains spread out around me.

Some travels give you the illusion that you are venturing into untouched lands where people have seldom been; traveling into the mountains of Asia, you go were people never seem to have left. The lake below was dotted by yurts and I was overcome with the knowledge that, a thousand years ago, there had been others standing in the same place.

Not that life is static: Electrical wires run along the roads bringing power to people ensconced deep in the mountains; cars, trucks, and motorcycles bring supplies rapidly. But even directly along the roads-sides, where access to commerce is easy, life remains harsh. People live scattered in small brick houses, sheltered from the harsh winds of the open plateau. The densely packed Chinese east seems like a dream.

(Photo essays available HERE)

Movie Review: Tangshan Earthquake: Aftershock

Aftershock, released on July 22 in over 4,000 Chinese movie theatres has a lot of hopes riding on it: The film cost around 100 million yuan to produce, it’s helmed by Feng Xiaogang, the nation’s most commercially successful director, and it’s the first IMAX-quality film to be produced outside the United States. The film has been heavily marketed—posters are everywhere and word of mouth campaigns have sought to hype it as an irresistibly engaging tear-jerker. With your ticket, theatres hand out little tissue packets for the unavoidable tears. With so much public interest, the film can’t wholly fail, the question is, with so much to prove, can it succeed?

Posters imply it to be a disaster movie, but it's aiming at something far more subtle—and far more ambitious. The film is set in Tangshan, a city outside Beijing which in 1972 suffered the most deadly earthquake of the 20^th century. Within a matter of minutes, 250,000 people died. The film follows the lives of a single family of four, sundered by the earthquake which forces the mother (played by Xu Fan, the director’s wife) to choose which of her two children to save.

Within the first half-hour, the earthquake has occurred and lives have been scarred forever. What follows is an examination of how people deal with such a disaster and continue on with their lives. The movie reveals itself to be a family drama, far less concerned with collapsing buildings than the with people in them and much more invested in piecing things back together than blowing them up.

The twists and turns of characters lives plays out against the backdrop of a changing China. Every event and every item in the meticulously designed sets is weighted with symbolism: A pair of married PLA soldiers in the 70s decorate their child’s room with era-appropriate propaganda posters; a family argument, taking place during the 80s, occurs as the characters are moving a refrigerator—an item just coming into coming use at the time; by the ‘90s, one character is teaching English and another is driving a car.

Such ambitions have their drawbacks. All this effort to make everything represent something larger means that nothing feels true to itself. A character goes off to work as a migrant worker, ten years later he is successful and driving his own car. Another character gets pregnant and contemplates getting an abortion. Many such actions, events, and decisions seem to occur not from the natural development of the characters, but because they serve to evoke a particular issue in Chinese society.

Likewise, those detailed sets, packed with so much significance, are often too nice. The interiors of character’s houses seem as realistic as the apartments on an episode of Friends. And, for all the attention to detail, the inclusion of blatant product placements is incredibly distracting—the audience I was in laughed when the camera paused for an extended time on a baijiu label. (The crassness of the advertising might have been lessened had the baijiu company not run the clip during the pre-movie trailers.)

The issue of product placement speaks to the current state of cinema in China. The country is on track to produce nearly 500 films this year and box office sales are up around 80% over last year. The CEO of IMAX has tripled the pace of new theatre construction and efforts are under way to develop mobile theatres to serve third and forth tier cities—China has around thirty cities of 1 million people that lack “an established multiplex structure.” Yet, despite all this, movies are still running at a loss. Easy access to bootlegs is a big reason as it depresses box office revenue, legitimate DVD sales, and the price studios can demand of tv stations for broadcast rights. The baijiu placement, however, nearly covered the cost of the movie.

The decision to hire Feng as the director was also a function of commercial calculation. His recent movies—The Banquet, If You Are the One, and The Assembly—have all been very successful and he himself is know as “pretty good at marketing films.” There is certainly much to admire: Feng and his cinematographer, Lu Yue, have created some beautiful moments—a particularly striking image is that of Tangshan on a New Year’s night, lit by the lights of a thousand burning joss paper stacks.

More generally, all those involved in the production of the movie should be commended for grappling with such a serious event. Tangshan may be the most deadly earthquake, but the film is being viewed with the memory of Sichuan’s earthquake fresh in people’s minds. (For comparison, it’s important to remember that United 93 and World Trade Center came out five years after 9/11 and met with public apathy.)

The movie is being compared to Sophie’s Choice in which Meryl Streep plays a mother, a Polish Jew forced to decide in a split second which of her children will die, but there is an important difference: Whereas Sophie’s fateful choice remained shrouded in mystery and serves as the crux of that film, the mother’s choice in Aftershock comes early, before we have much chance to care about the characters. This is, ultimately, the movie’s great flaw. Events are often too shallow, characters tend toward the two-dimensional, and a great deal of the emotion it creates comes from reminding audiences of something they really did emotionally connect with. The film itself, while good in many ways, never quite earns its tears.

Ma Nuo-ism: The Controversy Surrounding China’s Most Popular TV Show

[This will also appear in China Grooves magazine]

It may come as a surprise to many living in China, but, apparently, money and material possessions are of vital importance to young Chinese. More shocking: Such things are high among the criteria used to choose romantic partners!

If such details are unknown to you, then watching Fei Cheng Wu Rao (If You Are The One) will be quite a revelation. Produced by Jiangsu Satellite TV and airing on the weekend since January, the show is not unique, but merely the most popular among a slew of reality dating shows that have been hitting Chinese airwaves of late.

This particular show features a panel of twenty-four attractive, young Chinese women. Over the course of the program, they are introduced to a series of bachelors. At the outset, the man indicates to the host, Meng Fei, which girl he prefers—or, rather, in the show’s lingo, who “arouses his heart.” Over the course of three subsequent stages, the man tells a bit about himself via video clips of his home and work life and testimonials from colleagues. If the women find him unappealing in some respect, they can turn off the lights on their podiums. If, at the end of stage three, all the lights have been extinguished, the man is sent packing; if, however, lights remain, the tables reverse and it becomes the man’s turn to eliminate the remaining women.

As the show runs its course, candidates are asked to justify the reasons why they have eliminated one another. Westerners will be familiar with the self-promoting vanity and petty viciousness that reality show stars are capable of, but the bluntness of it has captured the attention of the Chinese and caused worry among officials.

During its first six months, Fei Cheng Wu Rao focused a great deal on money. As the men were introduced, little pop-ups on the screen would detail whether they owned a car or a house. Nor did the men play down such facts—one, Liu Yunchao, has been singled out for particular scorn for his extended bragging about his nearly million dollar bank account and multiple sports cars. While it’s worth noting that Liu was voted off the show an was actually an actor playing up the part, the underlying sense remains that morality and priorities he chose to display were in keeping with the show’s style.

Another controversial moment occurred when Zhu Zhenfang refused to shake hands with a male contestant, explaining: “Only my boyfriend gets to hold my hand. Everyone else, 200,000 renminbi per shake.”

The most famous contestant, however, is Ma Nuo. The young model from Beijing gained notoriety for her sharp rejection of a suitor. Asked if she would come for bike rides with him, she replied that a BMW would be far more “cool.” Her statement spread through the internet and metamorphosized into the more dramatic and memorable: “I’d rather cry in a BMW than laugh on a bike.” While the words are not hers, the statement sums up what many see to be the skewed values of modern Chinese matchmaking.

While such attitudes are par for the course on Western shows, in China it’s a revelation. The various contestants all reflect real dilemmas facing ordinary Chinese: Concerns over money and houses, over the involvement of parents, over a man’s ability to advance himself in the workplace. It’s easy to relate to many of the biographies and become emotionally caught up in whether or not a contestant finds a good match. Statistics show that many Chinese feel this way: Throughout May and June, the show was the number one program in China. Message boards flared up in discussions, stars became famous, rights were franchised off to different countries, and Jiangu Sattelite TV was able to charge astronomical advertising rates for it’s commercial slots.

This all changed at the beginning of June when the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) issued a statement criticizing the character of such shows, describing them as “vulgar.” It was emphasized that shows were not to allow models, actors, and “second-generation rich” free-reign to wallow in their wealth, promote unethical views of marriage, and preach “mammonism” for the whole world to see.

Joking aside, the prevalence of the attitudes seen on Fei Cheng Wu Rao is no surprise to anyone living in China and that is precisely the reason the government has decided to step in. A show of this sort, expressing the views that it does, is an affront to Socialist values and allowing it to continue without comment would imply acceptance.

To escape the cancellation that had met competitors like Wei Ai Xiang Qian Chong (Run For Love) in the weeks following the SARFT’s statement, Fei Cheng Wu Rao re-jiggered its format. Gone were specific mentions of money—though whether or not someone owned items which cost a significant amount remained permissible for discussion. A middle-aged psychiatrist named Huang Han was added to the show to dispense professional opinions, but meshed awkwardly with the youthful cast and disappeared after a few weeks. Overall, contestants began to emphasize their commitment to family and community. Passions for volunteer work suddenly came into vogue. Without a steady stream of moral corrosion to catch the public’s attention, ratings dipped.

As time goes on, more and more rumor and controversy swirls around the show and its more infamous participants. Ma Nou has, allegedly, been banned from appearing on all reality programming in China. Suspicious viewers have conducted background checks revealing that multiple contestants hail from the same Beijing university and suggesting that getting on the program is a fix. And a competitor, Hunnan Sattelite Television, has claimed the show is ripping off their program Women Yue Hui Ba (Take Me Out)— whose franchise rights they bought from an English broadcaster.

In short, uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.

Watching a recent episode, the difficulties of producing such a show were all too apparent. When the forth bachelor of the evening, a mild, bespectacled man with a squeaky voice and shy demeanor emerged, the podium lights immediately cut out by half. Then came his videos; one clip of him in a cramped officer with several other IT technicians and another showing him preparing lunch and stuffing it into a Tupperware container. Both clips were utterly depressing in their ordinariness and in their sense of routine. The man was utterly average and now found himself at the mercy of a panel of women, themselves under enormous pressure to dispense withering, memorable critiques.

What could be worse than an utterly average person to be unceremoniously booted off the stage and denied his shot at happiness. If this guy couldn’t succeed, who in modern China could have hope . . .And yet he won out! He found his match—and not just any of the women, but the one who had “aroused his heart.” Where an American show would never have included such a guy in the first place, here he was, on tv, taking home the girl. The cynics can grumble that it all seems staged, but the optimists and romantics can take heart. The show succeeds in so far as it balances the defeats and hassles of daily life with the possibility for love wining out in the end.

Photos: Kashgar

For photos of Kashgar City click HERE.

For photos of Kashgar Food and Products click HERE.

For photos of Kashgar People and Fashion click HERE.

For photos of Outside Kashgar City click HERE.

Photos: Dongxin Night Market

Click HERE for photos.

New Articles

What’s the Matter With Chinese Football?

Type in “China football why bad” on Google and a slew of answers quickly present themselves. Among the first hits are news articles detailing sex scandals, corruption prosecutions, and lopsided game losses. There aren’t a lot mentioning victories.

The question remains why?

Message boards are full of theories—mostly ignorant or racist—that don’t hold up on close examination: If Chinese people are too short, Pele and Maradonna have some explaining to do. If China’s developing country status is to blame, then Brazil and most African countries should be doomed to failure. If a certain national apathy toward the sport were the cause, the US shouldn’t be qualifying either.

Rather the problem seems largely to be the way sport is organized in the country. Sports where China does well—swimming, hurdling, and gymnastics for example—are heavily state-directed. Students are selected early and groomed for athletic success. Football is not among the sports that received a great deal of government largess.

In many countries there exist competitive and thriving professional football associations. These teams develop players over years. China’s Super League (CSL), however, is a shambles, currently under investigation for massive corruption. So far over twenty people—including many league executives—have been arrested for game-fixing and gambling. Apparently, entire teams were co-opted by criminal organizations and induced to take dives.

And, although it may be something of a chicken or the egg question, even if these institutions were running smoothly, the society at large is not focused on the sport (and sports in general) with the same enthusiasm as elsewhere. Football remains the most broadcast sport on CCTV5, but talk to Chinese children about which sports they enjoy and the answer will typically be ping pong and basketball. The former has long been popular and the latter has an internationally famous player to look to.

Nor are sports looked on as a legitimate career path to pursue. From a young age students are pressured to focus on their academics and prepare for the grueling and decisive test that awaits. Non-academic extra-curriculars are kept to a minimum in China. Inter-school athletics are negligible. School life does not revolve around athletics as it often does in the States. A kid with a passion for football just won’t find the same degree of family and community support as he would in Europe and elsewhere.

Finally, there is the simple fact that the Chinese team just isn’t that good. It’s in the same division as Japan, North Korea, and South Korea, all of which field competitive teams. China has won against major national teams in “friendlies”—it’s only the qualifying matches where success consistently alludes them. When they last made it to the World Cup in 2002, they failed to secure a single goal in three games.

In the following years the team has not faired much better. Besides losing when it counts, they have developed a bad reputation for thugishness—Tan Wangsong kicking a Belgian player square in the crotch during the Beijing games led a fan to quip that, although the team had failed to medal in football, they’d won “a medal in martial arts.” Similarly, the thirty-man melee between the Queen’s Park Rangers and China’s under-23 team in 2007 did nothing to soften the image.

All is not lost of course. Bad as they have since performed, the Chinese did make it into the World Cup only 8 years ago and the women’s team was in the 1999 finals. In sheer numbers, China commands the world’s largest football fan base. Perhaps a great Chinese player will emerge to inspire youths to play more and encourage parents to cheer them on. Or perhaps hosting the games will become the next big national ambition now that the Olympics are past and the Expo is nearing its close; such a moment on the international stage might spur the country to finally achieve.

In the meantime, however, China lags behind the competitors and pin-pointing the precise cause will doubtless remain a topic of barroom debate for years to come.

The Gaokao

Articles by western writers about the gaokao, China’s annual college entrance examination, always lead off with anecdotes; stories of parents crowding around schools in nervous vigil, of cities enforcing two-day long construction suspensions and noise-pollution bans, of tearful late arrivals begging on their knees to be let in, of taxi drivers given special right-of-way dispensations if carrying test-takers test-centers, of criminal rings busted for selling thousand dollar cheating apparatuses, of girls taking pills to insure their physical and academic schedules do not accidentally align, of students committing suicide in desperation. In short: Collective hysteria.

To westerners—certainly an American like myself—there is something mad about the test. Our own SATs are stressful, but they are not the be all and end all. A middling score combined with obvious talent—say sporting prowess or community involvement—can open as many or more doors than mere good grades.

Yet China is not like this. Whereas social life in American school revolves in large part around extra-curricular activities, for Chinese no such thing exists. School can last over ten hours a day, five days a week. Weekends are full of English classes, music lessons, and math preparation. Evenings consist of studying, watching tv, and temporarily escaping stress through online gaming and chat.

Years of school lead up to the gaoako and amid an array of statistics—9.5 million test takers, 6 million spots, a 68% acceptance rate for university—one stark number explains it all: 70,000 of this year’s college graduates are still unemployed. Over the past decade, in addition to the boom in apartments and factories, there has been a boom in universities. Whereas 1 million Chinese graduated in 1998, 6.3 million did last year. Job creation is not quite keeping pace and the gap in quality between universities is seen as being the crucial difference. Get into a good school and a job is assured, get into a second tier university and nothing is certain. (The five year olds whom I teach English to may not realize it, but they are already fighting for their futures.)

Tests as the sole portal to advancement are a Chinese tradition dating back nearly 1500 years. The test in its current form dates to 1978 when Deng Xiaoping reintroduced it as part of his reforms. Initially controlled entirely by the Ministry of Education, its devising has been handed over to the provinces during the subsequent years. Depending on the province, students must select their universities before or after the test. This often results in a student doing better than necessary for the school he chooses or, even worse, a low score preventing a student from attending the schools he has listed.

Universities for their part set quotas of how many students will be accepted from each province, the lion’s share given to their own provinces. Test scores are the main criterion for choosing who makes the cut. Other (marginal) considerations include minority status and success in various academic competitions.

For years the exam was held in July, but for the past several years it has been administered in June as to avoid the intense summer heat that blankets China.

The test itself is nine hours long and divided into three required topics: Chinese, Math, and a foreign language. Six other topics (Chemistry, Physics, Biology, History, Politics, and Geography) are usually chosen in addition. The most head-scratching part may be the essay portion where students are required to expand on a prompt. Localities can design their own—Shaanxi’s offered an anecdote about how goldfish only grow as big as their bowls and asked students to ruminate on the connection of environment and success—or they can use the nationally provided prompts. This year’s prompts called for students to discuss light reading or to expand on the saying, “Why chase mice when there are fish to eat?”

Abstract as this many sound, it offers room for a modicum of creativity. Most of the test is directly dependent on a student’s aptitude for rote memorization. The persistent criticism of the Chinese education system is its emphasis on teacher-centered learning, the test both reflects and privileges this style of education—even essay responses are the result of endless studying of rhetoric structure.

The overall score is out of 750. Students attempting to enter the nation's best schools—like Beijing’s Tsinghua University need scores between 660 and the low 700s to even have a sliver of hope. By contrast, equivalent programs in Xi’an require scores in the high 400s. With such fierce competition, there is obvious benefit to those whose parents can pay for expensive after-school prep classes.

Yet, if the goal is to equal the playing field for students, the alternatives are not particularly satisfying. Although China’s education and test policies may not encourage outside-the-box thinking, few from western countries can argue with a straight face that their own countries do any better at helping the poor rise up or limiting the benefits that flow from wealth and position.

If China looks to rags-to-riches success stories as evidence that the system is working, many in the upper-middle class are increasingly less convinced. One last statistic is important to consider: Last year as millions of Chinese youths struggled to get into the best national universities, nearly 250,000 opted to go abroad to school instead.

Street Food

[Again, this is one of my magazine articles.]

Without a doubt, my most pleasurable moments in Xi’an have come, sitting on little plastic stools at less-than-entirely-sanitary tables, savoring a plate of noodles (5 yuan) and watching the whole madcap nighttime drama of the city unfold around me. I seldom feel more connected with my fellow city-dwellers than I do crowded around a chao bing cart, rummaging amid piles of vegetables, meats, and tofus for the perfect midnight meal combination.

Xi’an is highly regarded for its variety and selection of street food. Weather (and other factors) permitting, you can find vendors at any time of day. That said, the variety of food on offer shifts over the course of the day and there are definite differences between the food one can find in the morning, afternoon and night.

Morning

As early as 7 in the morning, small carts line the streets. Most breakfast food involves either eggs, flour or a combination of the two. The most common morning treats are you bing and you tiao, fried dough. Bing is circular and tiao is long and stretched like a garlic stick; both have a taste reminiscent of a slightly salted donut and neither should cost more than 0.5 to 1 yuan. Typically Chinese will eat these with soymilk. Bing can be stuffed with shredded potato or spiced cabbage.

Another vast category of breakfast food is fried stuffed bread (bing). Unlike the simpler fried doughs, these are filled with chives (cong), eggs (jidan), or meat (niu rou) before they are cooked. Less unhealthy looking are the grilled versions of the same thing. None should cost more than 1-3 yuan.

If your preference is for something less artery-clogging first thing in the morning, options up your alley might include steamed bread (mantou) stuffed with veggies or any of the readily available spicy soups (hula tang). Also low fat is jian bing guozi—essentially a crepe filled with egg, chives, and onions.

Afternoon

Between morning and night a great many vendors either vanish or re-locate. Streets like Dongmu Toushi—at other times overflowing with food—become rather desolate save for men hawking pineapple on a stick (1-2 yuan).

There are notable exceptions. At lunchtime, along the backstreets, women pull out their large lunch carts full of meats, greens, rice, and noodles (kuai can). Most noticeable is along Luomashi Street. During midday, this main pedestrian boulevard, already crowded with shoppers, clothing sellers, and wedding planners, becomes full of food vendors as well.

Food unique to this time of day includes shredded pork sandwiches packed into steamed bread (fen zheng rou). Pancake sandwiches (tong luo shao) which can be filled with fruit jam, red beans, or the far-too-ubiquitous powdery-brown pork floss. My personal favorite are the Chinese Egg-McMuffins (like so much street food, their literal name, egg-meat, has no ring to it). These are nothing more than flour fried in something resembling a cupcake tray, filled with egg and meat. Delicious!

On many streets—especially in the Muslim Quarter—one can see fried starch tofu (chao liangfen). This and the non-fried variety are a gelatinous tofu made from water saturated with either flour, potato, or mung bean starch. This can be eaten cold, topped with sauce or it can be fried with spices. The process that creates these noodles produces excess material which is used for the common—and in my opinion rather off-putting—kao mian jin. Resembling pig-tails, these curly, spiced, barbequed doughs are, essentially, the detritus of cold noodle preparation.

Night

At night time, the streets flood with options. The most common sights are carts loaded down with a selection of vegetables, meats, eggs, mushrooms, and tofu. Choose what you want (typically .5 to 1 yuan per item) and the cook will fry it, boil it, or grill it depending on your preference. The vegetables can then be covered in a spicy chili sauce or a smoother sesame sauce. Similar to these are the fried sandwich (chao bing) carts that will cram all your selections into a fried round of bread.

Nearby are the carts serving fried noodles (chao mian). The typical cart will have a variety of noodle choices—several dry, steamed options, several moist-looking boiled varieties and probably rice to boot. To this can be added either egg (jidan), meat (rou), or, quite commonly, large in-shell shrimp and snails (tianluo). All for around 5 yuan.

Grilled meat skewers (kao rou) are often a common sight. Thin strips of finely-spiced meat are usually served up on a simple metal plate without any addition. The version sold by Uighur people from eastern China, however, will come with a special flat bread to eat in combination.

Among the cheapest options are the carts serving up dumplings (baozi) and wonton soup (huntun tang) both for about 5 yuan. To add flavor, dumplings can be dipped in a flavorful vinegar-chili sauce (tiao liao zhi).

Other choices might include duck meat sandwiches (ya rou) served in steamed bread or the regretfully all-too common stinky tofu (chou doufu) . . .

But, try as I may, this is only a partial list of the potential meals Xi’an offers up. The adventurous or ambitious ex-pat could spend a month of nights trying different dishes and still not taste them all. And herein lies the ultimate charm of Xi’an’s food scene, this superabundance of possibilities. It’s a food lover’s dream.

Photos: Street Food

Click HERE for photos.

Reuben Silverman, Cub Reporter

About two months ago, I saw that the local ex-pat magazine China Grooves was hiring volunteer copy editors. I wrote them and letter and set up a meeting; despite the advert, copy editing services didn't seem to interest them, but they told me they could always use some writers. The following are the four little pieces I've written so far.

They're not Mencken or Thompson, but they're not utter shit either:

Beilin Museum

Located beside the southern wall’s Heiping Gate, the Beilin Museum houses a fine little collection of steles and religious artwork from a variety of different dynasties.

The steles—large, carved stone blocks—are spread through seven rooms. The first contains classic works of Chinese philosophy and ethics. The black slabs, one lined after another, puts one in mind of the Vietnam monument in Washington, DC.

The second features family memorials, records of foreign relations, ennoblements, land-grants, and writings recounting the good deeds of various religious leaders. The third displays poetry, especially impressive calligraphy, and various inspirational accounts of filial piety.

The forth room is the most interesting, offering up a grab bag of steles. Some are portraiture and landscape, others are memorials—one, for example, commemorating a peasant rebellion leader financed paid for by his peasants followers. Another from several centuries later is a warning from the Qing to similarly rebellious peasants.

The western wing of the museum is given over to sculptures and carvings discovered in and around burial sites. These include the elaborately designed tomb of Li Shou, a cousin of the then-emperor; massive tomb guardians in the shape of lions, goats, rhinos, and mythical creatures; and “pictoral stones” showing both fantastical imagery—dragons, ghosts, and anthropomorphized animals—as well as more mundane scenes such as hunting and harvesting.

There are also a fair number of Buddhist sculptures. When the religion arrived in China, such artwork was used to educate the illiterate about the faith’s teachings. The museum’s collection ranges from small household relics to large heavenly guardian statues.

The value of the museum’s pieces lies not only in the things themselves, but in the contemplation of how much care and effort—a lifetime of knowledge and craftsmanship—went into their creation. Viewing works so full of passionate labor, one comes a bit closer to understanding lives long past lived.

Yangrou Paomo

Chances are good that, if you’re a foreigner living in Xi’an, a local has probably taken you out for yangrou paomo. If not, it’s only a matter of time. The restaurants are everywhere; lining the streets of the Muslim Quarter, glimpsed down alleyways, even operating out of swank, high-end venues. Inside many city buses, posters advertising the wonders of Xi’an culture show the terracotta army, the Big Goose Pagoda, the Tang Dynasty show and a bowl of yangrou paomo.

This is the local dish and it’s marvelously simple: Bread, noodles, mutton, spices and broth. For the north Chinese with their traditions of horse riding and long distance hunts, the dish was both simple and filling. A Muslim influenced Silk Road dish, it is said to have originated in the 11^th century, at the court of the Western Zhou emperors.

In the heavily touristed areas of the city—like Muslim Quarter—you’ll see yangrou paomo sitting in pre-made bowls (9 ¥), just waiting to have broth ladled into it. While this can be tasty, it’s not the customary way to eat it.

In the better restaurants (20 ¥), you’ll first be asked how many pieces of bread (bing) you want. One will be fine if you have a modest appetite, two will certainly fill you. Once your choice has been made, you’ll be handed the bread and an empty bowl.

What follows is a process of breaking the rounds of bread in half and ripping those halves into small pieces. Whereas a machine compresses the bread, ripping by hand keeps it soft and allows it to retain absorbency. The smaller the pieces are, the better they suck up the broth—and, as a friend insisted to me, if I didn’t tear the pieces up small, the cooks would take me for a country-bumpkin and withhold the choice meat slices.

While thorough ripping can take time, Chinese insist that the whole business can have a relaxing, almost zen-like quality. You become part of the cooking process.

Ripping done, the bowls are whisked away and returned several minutes later full of broth, vermicelli noodles, and slices of mutton. Served along with the meal is a spicy chili paste and sweet pickled garlic which can either be eaten on its own or mixed into the bowl.

This is kou tang (mouth soup); it is what you can expect to be served if you don’t specify otherwise. If this doesn’t quite appeal, several other options are available: Dan zou (walking alone) is a version where the broth, meat and noodles are served up with the bread, as yet still whole, on the side, ready to be dipped in. Gan pao (dry soaked) is the standard yangrou pao mo drained of its broth, but still soggy. And, most wonderfully named, is shui wei cheng (water besieged city) which is just your typical paomo bowl brimming with broth.

The best way to eat yangrou pao mo is to work around the outside toward the center. Since the bread is thoroughly soaked in broth, it is quite hot. Avoiding the center of the bowl bypasses the hottest portion and leaves the roof of your mouth intact, allowing you to enjoy Xi’an’s signature dish with the utmost satisfaction.

Banpo Museum

Banpo Museum is itself something of a relic. Old photos near the entrance, show the site in the early 50s, at the time of excavation. A few archeologists stand amid locals. Around them stretch empty fields. Now the place is surrounded by roads and buildings and getting there requires a long bus ride to the eastern suburbs, beyond the Chan River.

The museum displays the remnants of a 6000 year old village. Covered by a large warehouse building are the remains of numerous huts, identifiable by numerous stake holes in the ground. Wooden frames, subsequently filled in with mud and straw, were set in the holes.

Archeologists suspect that the Yangshao culture which inhabited the site was matriarchal (e.g. run by women). Female burial sites contain far more objects than male ones, leading researchers to believe that women’s position in the society was elevated.

In addition to these burial sites, archeologists have unearthed a great deal of pottery used to bury dead children. A number of storage pits have been excavated too, along with a portion of the deep moat which once surrounded the village.

Other buildings contain artifacts from the site and less obviously relevant displays such as animal fossils.

The nicest part of the museum, however, is the least historical part. Outside the main building is a large garden area full of peony flowers and reconstructions of the Neolithic huts. The whole place is in a state of quaint disrepair, but the upshot is that you find yourself able to sit in relative peace and quiet.

Chinese Calligraphy

How does one express his inner nature? How can we best judge a person’s soul? For the imperial Chinese, writing offered the window. Zhang Xu and Huai Shu, two Tang dynasty calligraphers, for example, would get liquored up and launch into shouting tirades as they performed their art. Zhang, it is said, would often use his hair in place of a paint brush. Not surprisingly, the two avoided standard writing styles in favor of freer forms.

Nowadays, when we think of Chinese script, we tend to separate it into Traditional and Standard. When confronted with the thought of learning the former, those of us unable to learn even the latter shudder. Yet both are merely a fraction of the range of characters once in common circulation among literate Chinese. What we think of as “written Chinese” is just kaishu style, the simplest of five possible scripts.

The oldest style of Chinese writing is zhuanshu, or Seal Script. Originating several thousand years ago, it conveys a sense of visual antiquity. The characters are long, narrow, insect-like, almost otherworldly. The impression is far more literal than other, more abstract scripts. It was the official writing style of the Qin dynasty.

Lishu script, or Clerical Script, followed. Much faster to write than Seal Script—and, therefore, more suited to use in bookkeeping—it retains some of the same elongated qualities as its predecessor.

The other three major scripts emerged concurrently during the Han. Two of these, caoshu (Running Script) and xingshu (Walking Script), are cursive versions of the clerical script. As the names suggest, caoshu is the more flowing and difficult of the two while xingshu moves between the two extremes of precision and wild abandon. Kai (Standard Script) is a further, squarer, less-stretched version of the clerical script.

Within a single style there are a range of techniques. Connoisseurs of calligraphy can rhapsodize about how the smallest action can alter the sense of a character. Whether one uses the edge of the brush or the tip, how long the brush is used before refreshing the ink, how much pressure is applied; the choice of both style and mode of expressing it speaks volumes about the calligrapher.

Yet, beyond reflecting the personality of the individual calligrapher, calligraphy is also a conversation between the present and the past. Great artists carefully study the examples of past masters. (Consider Wang Xizhi, the forth century scholar and “Sage of Calligraphy.” Not only was he a beautiful calligrapher in his own right, refining styles in a manner still emulated to this day, but he also labored to collect the work of many others, past and present. His most famous work is his preface to Literary Gathering at the Orchid Pavilion, a collection of poetry by artists he’d brought together.)

To appreciate and to produce calligraphy is thus both an individual and a collective act of the most surpassing subtlety and beauty.