What the Chinese Don't Eat (15 page)

‘Shut up!’ I know, people might shout at me – I am, after all, someone who has had just a few hours’ learning and dares to talk about great art and painting. I should know that no matter if it is western or eastern art, before you want to reach it you have to climb thousands of stairs.

It is hardly necessary for me to say that you all should have a look at Lei Lei’s exhibition. You would be touched by the conversation between western and Chinese culture, stranger and friend, man and woman, life and death, face and soul.

Lei Lei’s exhibition
Everyone’s Life Is an Epic
was at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford
from 23 March until 17 July 2005

China is my homeland. But these days – in the bars, cafes, on the streets – I am lost in translation

When you are in Rome/China, do as the Romans/Chinese. I have been struggling with being a real Chinese person in China since I came back to the land of my birth at the beginning of this month.

I can no longer understand the menus: the dishes named in the traditional phrase or the modern common saying, such as ‘Touch Hands, Through Black Hair’, which is the title of a popular song but also seaweed cooked with pig’s trotter. ‘Mrs Green’ is a dish of deep-fried dry, green vegetables. ‘Why is it Mrs Green, not Miss?’ I asked the waiter; he explained that ‘Miss Green’ is used for fresh vegetable dishes. (This is a typical Chinese philosophy – after marriage, women become dry and tasteless.) Meanwhile, ‘Hero Can’t Pass Beauty’s Test’ – the 1,500-year-old traditional sentence from a Tang poem – is tofu cooked with beef. By the way, if you are a man, don’t say you like to eat tofu ‘
Ai chi dou fu
’ to your Chinese friends – that means you like sex.

In the internet cafe, I dare not check my emails any more because I can’t understand the questions: which would you like to use, one with a mic? A webcam? A digital printer? I see lots of people, not only youths but also grey-hairs, talking to ‘nobody’ on their computer, their body language dancing.

On the street, strange voices appear: an old man telling a family story; young girls singing; a military commander reprimanding a soldier, ‘Wake up and go to work!’; an emperor ordering a concubine; even Chairman Mao’s voice can be heard:
‘People’s Republic China stands up in the world.’ All of these are modern Chinese ringtones!

I can see I have become hopeless in the eyes of my friends; lost in the streets that are too new to be marked on the map; lost in translation in pubs, coffee shops and restaurants; lost in the traditional Chinese health centres with their ‘knowledgeable shower’, ‘historical massage’, ‘generations medical soup’ and ‘spiritual tea’.

‘You are much more Chinese than me,’ I said to my British friend Tim Clissold, the author of
Mr China
, when we met in Beijing. He laughed and told me of his experience in London. Last year, after 16 years working in China, he was thinking of moving back to England. But after just a few weeks in his homeland he changed his mind; because he couldn’t drive there – his technique was too ‘Chinese’ for British roads and his car had been bumped too many times.

Equally, an extract from
Mr China
shows why I am not a modern Chinese:

I had just caught the tail end of the planned economy, where Beijing still tried to manipulate the minutiae of China’s vast economy. At times, it might take half an hour to persuade a receptionist to let me stay in a hotel. She’d say that it was full and that there were no rooms available. At first I was puzzled and went away wondering where all the guests were, but I figured out that under the planned economy it made no difference whether a hotel was full or empty and if there were guests there would be more work to do. Since everything was owned by the state no one cared …

Sometimes I had to persuade a shop assistant to sell me something that I could see behind the counter; I’d go into a restaurant and they’d tell me that there was no rice, or I’d go to
a bar and they’d pretend to be out of beer. I even found a restaurant in Xi’an that closed for lunch. But after a while I learned to probe and question, cajole and persuade – and never to give in! So I barged into kitchens in restaurants to find something to eat and went upstairs in hotels in search of an empty room; I grabbed whatever I needed from behind shop counters and searched sheds for bicycles to hire. Even going to buy veg-etables was a challenge but I sensed a rapport with the people I met; it was almost as if they enjoyed the game of wits and they often gave a laugh or a smile once they finally gave in.

That was China 15 years ago. Could you tell me of another country that has changed so much in such a short time?

There are still students in China who believe babies come out of their mothers’ tummy buttons

I read a joke in a newspaper when I was in China last week. An 11-year-old boy asks his father: ‘Dad, where did I come from?’ ‘Your mother and I picked you up from a very special street,’ the father tells him in a serious voice.

Then the boy goes to his grandfather. ‘Grandpa, where did my father come from?’ he asks.

‘God knows your grandmother and I love children, so he sent an eagle to drop your father, your uncles and your aunt in front of our door, one by one, at different times.’

‘But, why do all your children take after you, not God, and how could he remember to drop similar-looking children in front of your door when he must have been busy doing this all over the world?’ The boy can’t stop asking questions.

‘Ah, but because he is God, he can manage it. Sorry, I have to go.’ And the grandfather rushes off.

A week later, the father checks his son’s homework, which is about his family history: ‘It is very strange what happened in my family; I don’t know why, but the previous two generations had no sex at all.’

I laughed and laughed.

Sex was forbidden in Chinese culture after the beginning of the Song dynasty in the 10th century. We had had many books on the subject but they were treated as health handbooks for the rulers, and ordinary people were never allowed to read them.

Most Chinese still believe that thinking and talking about
sex is ‘dirty and bad’, even between married couples. For a thousand years, family, school and society have taught us to think like this. Therefore many Chinese have grown up in total ignorance.

When I was interviewing women in China before 1997, I was told by vast numbers that they had tried to use plasters to stop the bleeding when they had their first period. Almost none of them said she was happy and excited at becoming sexually mature.

And I am not joking when I tell you that, even now, many university students believe babies come out of their mothers’ tummy buttons. China started sex education in primary schools in 2002. I was curious to know who the first group of teachers would be. I was told that some were politics teachers – that is very good, I thought, at least students won’t take long to learn about sexual politics once they’re teenagers. Some were sports teachers – that is not bad either, I thought, I could see the link between sport and sexuality, and there’s a poetic link in Chinese culture. But some teachers were made to do it as no one else would take the job.

At first, lessons were very embarrassing, with neither teachers nor students understanding the diplomatically chosen language. Then questions were taken home, but feedback from parents was furious – how dare you teach my kid such a dirty lesson! Sexual hooligans!

To be honest, this is something that is hard for a middleaged Chinese woman to feel relaxed and natural about overnight. My heart starts pumping and I go bright red when people mention sex during my public talks. So I can’t believe that our charity, Mother’s Bridge of Love, has decided to hold an art exhibition called
Walnut Series – Sex in Chinese Culture
.

Everybody was shocked when we first glimpsed Chinese
artist Xu Zhong-ou’s paintings. He once taught in Maryland, US, where he would gather some of his students under a walnut tree. Whereas most food in Chinese art traditionally carries a symbolic meaning (peaches represent longevity, pine nuts fertility), the walnut appealed to him as a pure (qingbai) medium. He encouraged his students to use the walnut as an unexplored source of artistic creation. This inspired him to produce his own representations of walnuts, in which he found an elusive expression of sexuality.

It was the western volunteers who first pointed out: ‘Those paintings are so sexy!’ At first, the young Chinese volunteers were too shocked to speak, until suddenly they became very open about sex.

I was quite worried about this un-Chinese title and asked the young Chinese volunteers if we should be leading people to see sex, even if it is infused with Chinese subtlety. They shouted: come on, old Xinran, it is time for we Chinese to tell the west: we have a very rich sexual knowledge and strong human sensuality in our culture.

I know they must be right. Please go and have a look, I would love to hear your views. You can tell me at
xinran@mother bridge.org
.

The Walnut Series – Sex in Chinese Culture
was exhibited at the Royal China, 13 Queensway,
London W2 4Q J, in May 2005.

The chatroom gives Chinese women a chance to be open and express their true thoughts

I have never been to an internet chatroom before – not because of any smart reasons, only because of my poor grasp of computer technology. But it was suggested that visiting one might give me some insight into the minds of young Chinese women.

‘No one makes up her opinion, in the way women normally do in the office, on the street, or even at home, using carefully chosen words to conceal their true thoughts. It’s like the way you don’t know what some women really look like under all their heavy makeup. But in a chatroom, they say what they want to – nakedly and very honestly,’ a bookstore assistant in Beijing said to me, while her right hand patted books again and again, a gesture that means ‘trust me’. So I did.

The Chinese chatroom I visited,
www.qq.com
, was already full of ‘Wang-Min’– internet obsessives – fighting over the issue of ‘how to view love affairs’. I immediately regretted that I had not visited the site earlier. It is a really good place to find ‘freedom of the press’ from Chinese women: their words are so sharp they could cut your mind.

‘Who knows you haven’t had a love affair? Can you guarantee that you will never have a love affair? Don’t be naive, no love is true, no human being is faithful!’ – Free lady.

‘Would this “Free lady” allow her husband to have another lover?’ – Love defender girl.

‘Why not, if we both don’t want to be trapped by that piece of paper, a marriage certificate.’ – Free lady.

‘Then, why do you need marriage?’ – Love defender girl.

‘Because it meant we could give our children a family name and formal parenting, as everybody does in this society.’ – Free lady.

‘I see, you are a hypocrite! You think your children will be blind or that they could put up with your hideous behaviour. I don’t. I think you have no right to be a parent at all!’ – Love defender girl.

‘What’s the difference between close friends and lovers? Not much at all, you need more than one person to share your pressure and happiness, and even the physical needs in your life. Why should we only enjoy our bodies within marriage? Emotionally and physically, our needs are the same! Sex is not only for love, love does not only mean sex … little kid.’ – Free lady.

‘I would like to see if your daughter follows your example, and how you will feel when she brings several lovers to see you, or maybe she could take over your lover … Who knows what could happen to her – a daughter of yours – you are such an evil woman!’ – Love defender girl.

I was so delighted to see these words from Chinese women talking so openly on the internet.

Many of my Chinese journalist friends are Wang-Min, too. ‘Most of us just use these chatrooms to play at “freedom”, which we couldn’t do anywhere else. We go there to have some enjoyable arguments, to find new words, fresh language, and exercise our brains. Our freedom had been shackled for too long. Don’t imagine you can have freedom all in one go, it is more like an immune system that needs to be built up over time,’ one said.

The next thing was for me to try out a topic in a chatroom. I asked a very old question: ‘Do you believe Chinese women could ever be equal to men?’

The fighters appeared from nowhere.

‘It is impossible, until men can give birth to a baby!’ – Rain bell.

‘Why not, women can use their flexible brains in exchange for man’s labour!’ – Tree roots.

‘Why do we need equality? Men are mountains, women are water, and the difference between them is good – we wouldn’t have that if we were living in an equal world. Women and men should be not equal, so that we can have something we need and yearn for from each other.’ – Rubbish bank.

‘Let’s see this equality in our basic human existence. We need each other for human reproduction, to live. What is the meaning of being a man or a woman? That is dictated by nature – men should be strong, even violent; women should be soft even to the point of tears, that is a kind of female beauty. So, don’t destroy this world with your stupid equality!’ – Sky eyes.

‘I wonder, could women and men ever understand each other? Has this world given us any opportunity to see real equality between women and men since the time of the western God to the Chinese revolution?’ – Question leaves.

The messages didn’t stop flooding in until I left the Chinese chatroom. Maybe it is a debate that will rage to the time of our great-great-granddaughters.

Socks are a status symbol – does that mean barelegged westerners are all peasants?

‘Why do you wear stockings in summer?’ one of my students once asked me. I’d never been asked or even thought about this before. ‘You know, western women only wear stockings in summer for major celebrations or meeting the Queen. But you wear them every day just for teaching – even in hot weather.’ The student was a British man in his 40s, who had come to improve his Chinese writing. ‘Do your women really not wear stockings in summer when they are out in public?’ I asked him. ‘Would they turn up to a formal meeting with bare legs?’