Me Ol' China (Week 15)

Please note that this week blog has been written between Thursday and Sunday and ?I have not had any time to review what I wrote. enjoy it!

Once again a very busy week at work. I had some personal issues to solve, some health issues, some stress related ones and I really do not fancy going to Europe. I am writing on Thursday because I will not have time to keep you posted next week and probably for the next 3 weeks.

Let me invite you, once again to link your logs to this one if you have a Blog as well. For me it's a pleasure reading blogs and I will gladly place a link to yours if you wish.

This week.. Let's forget all the crap... I didn't even had my Chinese class! my teacher and her boyfriend split up and she was too nervous to teach. A friend of mine has had some love issues with his ex girlfriend, a girl-friend of mine in Europe had some love problems with her boyfriend... So... what did I say? Oh yes... let's forget the crap!

This week... Berlusconi won again the elections... 15 years later he is there again with his usual allies except for the Christian Democrats that have no reason to exist as, in Italy, everybody is a Christian democrat wither you are fascist or communist. Let's forget the crap!

This week... I had such hard time at work... Let's forget the crap!

This week... I have been feeling unwell and still feel like that since I came back from Europe and I am gaining weight with no reason and my diabetes is starting playing up as the days I was in Europe... Still crap!

This week... I haven't been to the gym every single day, I could not be bothered... Too tired and too busy with work... shit!

This week amongst all this crap something has happened though... I have been out twice during the week with some people I met thanks to this blog.

The person that commented some old weekly reports was here in Beijing and it was a great pleasure meeting her and her partner in a Sichuan restaurant. we spend a nice couple of hours talking about nearly everything and time went so fast and I hope I will be able to meet them again in the future.

The other encounter was with a local person with whom we exchanged some emails in the past. She is a young lady interested in photography and poems and despite her age she is very mature.
I find her very interesting as she represents the third sex and here in China, lesbianism, is not considered at all. Male gays are accepted by society but lesbianism doesn't seem to have any consideration at all. I find rather interesting talking to homosexual females ladies and compare points of view about women. I tend to disagree on everything except for one thing: we both prefer girls to boys!

One thing to report this week is the aftershock of the Tibet story. We are going to France and we have been told that there are chances that our hotel will have to be changed because some chains, I do not disclose the names until the news is official, are refusing to accept Chinese guests. I find it rather disgusting and I really think that our French cousins could be boycotted for many many reasons. I really like France and I love the people and I really like their Constitution that grants asylum to people that no other country in the world would, but I think that giving hospitality to terrorists, ayatollahs and shas, and refuse to host Chinese individuals is really really low. Hope the news our travel agent disclosed today is false or I will start boycotting France and French people, starting immediately with our guests coming here nearly every other week.

It's now Sunday evening and I am in plane direct to Paris. Our hotel has been changed due to "sudden unavailability". Well.. .I called the hotel to verify if they had rooms for tomorrow night and the two following days and the answer was a convincing "bien sure" (of course). So, I am afraid, it will be my turn to boycott French products and people when they will be in China and already during these days in France I will do very little to leave money to my (once) beloved cousins.

The flight from Beijing to Rome was very very long. The usual 10-11 hours when done 3 times in a months feels much longer. Once I used to suffer the jetlag going west to east but I realise that in the last years it's being more unbearable the east to west journey... Not sure how it works so if there is any expert, please explain. These weeks will be really tiring. The trip to Europe will be really a tour de force: Beijing - Rome - Paris - London - Brussels - Stuttgart - Rome - Valletta - Rome - Beijing all in three weeks! It's a lot even for someone used to traveling like me.
Let's go back to Saturday morning, before getting on the Air China plane. I took a cab outside my apartment and I realised that I had only 100 Yuan in my pocket. I though that it would have been enough as last time cost me 65 Yuan. Well, the driver was a man in his early sixties, he had more wrinkles in his face than hair on his head. He was very friendly and smiley but, I thought, when I will tell him that I got not enough money to pay, he will change... The taxi fare came up to 107 Yuan. 7 Yuan id a mere 70 cents of a euro but over here it's serious money. I explained with my broken (I should say rotten) Chinese that I didn't have enough money and I took a 5 euro note from my wallet and given to him telling him that it was the equivalent of 50 Yuan. I don't think I will ever forget his face when he saw that note. He was absolutely ecstatic. Never seen an adult being so happy an fascinated by anything. He was holding the note with both hands and looking at it, as if he was checking whether it was a fake. He was looking at it and looking back at me with an air of approval and gratitude. If he were a dog his tale would have made him take off. I looked back in the wallet and I found another note that was in mint conditions and I exchanged the notes. He was over the moon and thanking me warmly and holding my hand with both his hands and shaking them as nobody has ever done before. 5 Euro to make an old man happy... Amazing, I thought. This memory accompanied me in the airport and while I am flying towards Paris, I still feel the joy. Before he took the luggage out of the car trunk I gave him a 1-euro coin too and he was looking at it in the same way he looked at the note and keeping thanking me with his Xie Xie's.

When I landed last time in Beijing I didn't realise how beautiful Terminal 3 is. It's an airport by itself, bigger than many other airports I have seen around the world. Shops are really nice and both duty free and ordinary shops have such a variety of good for sale. Restaurants abound and so my favourite worldwide junk food chain: Burger King (Hungry Jack for the Oz friends reading this blog). I enjoyed my Junk Meal. I have to admit that a sense of guilt pervaded me while I was biting the Double Whopper with double layer of cheese but once I dag in the double cheeseburger the sense of guilt had gone and I felt really happy to have found the first BK in China.

This week has been a particularly hard one as I had a few friends all experiencing some sort of sentimental issues. Some had problems with their partners, some had split and some were thinking about it. I found myself playing the role of a matchmaker or an eye-opener. Despite my age I still cannot understand how love works. I think that if I will ever meet cupid I might throw an arrow at him. Those who have heart problems have no problem, a dear friend of mine used to say. And I agree with him. But I tend to find more and more difficult understanding how people can live without problems in today's world. I thought of checking if Chinese love the same way Big Noses do and I asked two friends of mine, a boy and a girl, what they thought about these stories. Let me tell you about the situation.

26 years old man, split with the girlfriend 6 months ago, still in love these days. The girlfriend calls him back after such time just to say Hi and they start with sms exchanges and some telephone calls. He openly tells her how in love he still is and she slashes any hope of reconciliation: she has a new boyfriend that takes care of her and even if she is not in love with him, she feels protected and secure. The broken heart man gets down and starts thinking that he is not good at anything. I will pass on my points of view because I have told him personally what I think but I tell you what my friends have told me.

The girl, married, 34, 1 child (12 years old), professional journalist, Beijinger. "I think that the girl is right and the behaviour of the guy shows that she is right. Lack of confidence can be a problem for a woman. Love is something relative. Love fades with time while a man in the family is always needed". She married her husband because of his financial background and because he was able to prove that he would have taken care of her. She has never been in love with her husband either but she couldn't certainly live without him.

The boy, married, 41, 1 child (7 years old), banking manager, from Tianjin. I think that the guy has done a good deal in not "marrying" her. A man should always find a shoe matching his foot. The girl was too tough for him so it's good she found someone that could take care of him and keep her under control. The boy will certainly find someone that will appreciate his honesty even if I think that he will grow out of his insecurity and he will get tougher. Anyway, I still cannot understand why she called him in a first place.

Story number two. 36 years old woman. 2 children from two different men. Never married. First child 11 years old girl, second child 2 years old boy. First husband was a crook and the second one, the one she really loves, is unable to get a job and maintain the family. Plus he seems not to love the girl. She decided to leave him long long ago but it's two years that they split and go back together. The man keeps on going back at his will even when she tells him to go away and, in the meantime, she had two abortions. she still loves him but for the 3rd time this year she left him. And it won't be last, for sure.

The girl opinion. "First of all, having had two children from two men doesn't play in her favour and I think that she shouldn't be so fussy about the man she found. She is lucky to have found someone to bring up someone else's child. I would just try to please him as much as possible but I would try not to get pregnant again. In China something like this would never happen".

The guy's opinion. "I think that the man is right not to want to commit to her. What kind of woman is one that has two children from two different fathers and still does nothing to avoid having children. I would not marry a woman like that and I would even take the child away from her and leave her alone with the other kid."

In this second case the point of views are more similar. They both are blaming the girl for the situation, without looking at all at the fact that the father of the young child is a lazy bastard.

Last case. 23 years old girl, economically independent, living with her boyfriend, same age, since they were 18. She is virtually prisoner of the guy and has to do everything he says form what to eat to what to dress. Absolutely forbidden to entertain any conversation with men. If she goes out with friends she must go back home by 18:00. She has left the boyfriend. They might go back together if he changes his attitude. That's what she reckons.

The girl's opinion. "She has done well to leave him. She has her independence, she can find something better. He will not change but if she is really so adamant of her independence, she is condemned not to get married or live an unhappy life, unless she marries a westerner.

The guy's point of view: "She has done him a favour. A girl like that doesn't really offer any type of guarantee. For sure she is tired of him and she has got someone else. that's why she found the courage to leave him. Most women are like that. They do not leave what they got until they found someone else. I wouldn't go with a girl like that"

A friend of mine, 30 years old girl, told me once: "You are lucky because you are a man an even luckier because you are a Westerner. You can divorce, you can stay married, you can have sex outside the wedlock, you can have as many girlfriend as you please if you decide to do so. I can't even if I am a divorcee, I cannot have sex with a man I like just for the sake of it. China is very tough on libertine women."

A divorcee that dates a man is considered as a libertine. I really wonder if China will ever overcome this kind of taboos. Last week we saw the Suzie Wongs and on the other hand we have this strict view on "libertines". The cultural revolution must have something to do with it but if I compare the Chinese mentality to the one I found in Eastern Europe in the late 90's I find an abyss of difference between the two. Hungary, Czech, Poland are the example of how communism got nothing to do with this vision about "free costumes". In those countries, the promiscuity wasn't seen as such a sin, even in catholic Poland this was not a "moral crime", actually, a colleague of mine, in Budapest, told me once that "the only form of freedom under communist regime was "sex freedom". The parity between women and men on the work place and in everyday's life was very evident by the positions women occupied in everyday's life, especially in Hungary. But in social contests you could see that women were still considered as ... women. A gentleman in Hungary was not much different than one in Europe. In China we assist to an absolute equality on the workplace and in life but this equality is even in everyday's life. There isn't such a regard for women. They are considered exactly like men but when relationships turn sour, women are considered like a subspecies. So, I assume, that this is something that comes from tradition rather than communism.

I will tell you next week about the interesting talks I have been having in europe about China and Tibet. Stay tuned!