CULTURE
Peeking Into China's Closets
For the past four years I have been filming interviews for Portico, a company
that does ethnographic market research. Instead of gathering data from focus
groups, ethnographic researchers interview people in their homes while they
cook, clean or do yard work.
Poking around in people’s refrigerators and closets while they talk about their handbag obsession has been an amusing break from the tedium of grad school and teaching, so I’ve played hooky to shoot video for them whenever possible.
When Portico asked me if I’d like to do some research in China for their new division Corporate Fly, I leapt at the chance. The “Fly” is an as-yet-untested offshoot of Portico. It’s an idea Portico founder Caroline and I cooked up on the beach last spring to help American executives understand China’s emerging middle class.
My job was to set up a network of contacts in the first and second tier cities of China – by which, they mean Beijing and Shanghai with the rest to follow -- all the while filming markets, street life, interviews, fashion, food, and commerce.
I arrived at my first stop -- the Shanghai airport -- loaded down with tripods, light stands, cameras, and all the computer accessories any American would want on the road – and fearful that everything I owned would be confiscated before I even got in the country.
As soon as I rounded the last corner at the end of the last long walk through the airport, I found myself at Customs – facing a huge room filled, as in max capacity, with people. I kept looking for a line I could fall into, preferably the shortest one, to speed my way through. But there were no lines. Only this amoeba-like mass of shapeless black cotton suits topped by faces that, I learned soon enough, I would have to navigate before I could even face a human being and say, in my own best English, “Let me in. Please.”
As I stood among the hordes – now I know what hordes means – I kept worrying about the geo-political implications of my secret mission in China. I was carrying thousands of dollars worth of television recording equipment into a country that, by news accounts in the West at least, just sentenced a man to death for smuggling out of the country a VHS tape of a dam project.
The room was stifling. Without knowing why, I began to feel guilty. Why wasn’t I smaller? Why wasn’t I wearing a black a shapeless black cotton suit? A hundred questions ran through my head. Even if they confiscate my equipment, I still won’t go to jail -- will I? If I actually get stopped at Customs, this carnet I made up will work. Won’t it? I mean, honestly, how many years can they sentence me to for coming to peek into their closets? Can you get time off for good behavior? The more I sweated, the more years I added to my imagined prison sentence.
I stood in line and waited. But they don’t really go in for lines in China. Instead people just pour themselves into any open inch. I got the hang of it after about 100 people butted in ahead of me. Lines 1 through 12 were for people holding Chinese passports. Lines 14-26 were for the rest of us. There was no Line 13. I have no idea why they omitted it, maybe superstition. I was too worried about them confiscating my equipment to ask.
But no one opened my camera bag, checked my equipment, read my carnet, or even batted an eye at my declaration form. I breezed through as fast as I could, carrying all that gear, thankful that no one thought I was a spy for Western Capitalism – which, in fact, I was.
All that mattered was this: I was in.
My First Day in China
I hitched a ride to my hotel on a shuttle bus. A TV hanging above the driver was playing a loop of cartoonish reality shows --what Michael Rabinger once called British “butt humor.”
The Shanghai International Airport is in the Pudong sector of Shanghai on the eastern edge of the city, but my hotel was across town in Puxi, the western half. I’d been told that Pudong is sinking 1/4-inch a year under the weight of new high rise buildings that are going up to accommodate the influx of western businessmen. The person who told me this said it in an off-hand way, almost proud of this sign of economic growth.
I was exhausted by the time I finally got settled, but I had optimistically arranged in America to meet Amy Zhang for dinner in the hotel lobby. Amy is a friend of Wu Jia, who is a friend of Richard Perlman, who is a friend of mine in Chicago who does business in China. Richard thought Wu Jia would be a good source of contacts for me. But Wu Jia was in the states while I was in Shanghai, so she sent Amy as her emissary. And that’s how we’re shrinking the world, one friend at a time.
Amy had emailed she would be there by 6 o’clock “more or less depending on the traffic.” So I was downstairs promptly at 6. I checked out the hotel jewelry shop, feigned enthusiasm for and discussed jade – to be honest a stone that’s never moved me – with the saleswoman. (FYI the lighter green is the more precious grade.) After that I walked the lobby perimeter, memorized the geometric and floral carpet pattern, and examined the room’s paintings, all the while keeping an eye on possible chair or sofa vacancies. None opened up.
By 7 o’clock, I was starving. I’d eaten nothing since the flight, and I’d begun doubting my understanding of Amy’s email. I decided to give her 10 more minutes before giving up and having dinner alone. Just then a man walked up to me holding a piece of paper with “Ms. Alicia” written on it. Amy was on the phone, caught in traffic. She’d be here in another 30 minutes.
I returned to my room, cracked open a mini bar beer, and ate the airline nuts I’d tucked into my bag in case all the Shanghai food gave me the runs. My room looked down 23 floors to the city below. It had begun to rain. Across the street, I could see the sparks from 10 or more welders in a construction site roughly the size of a city block. When I got back to the lobby, an open seat magically appeared and, about 15 minutes later, so did Amy. It was worth the wait.
Amy is 30, but could pass for 19. Her hair is long and straight, her eyes are framed in black, rectangular glasses. She wore a plain, dark blue business suit, no jewelry. On the way to her car she told me she’d picked out a traditional Chinese restaurant that was more or less in the neighborhood, unless I wanted Western cuisine.
Her car was an old VW from the 1980’s in need of either a new engine or a transmission/clutch assembly. Its top speed was about 25 miles an hour. They honk a lot in Shanghai. A lot, even when you’re going the speed limit. As we inched down the highway cars careened around us, their horns drowning out most of our conversation. Amy, oblivious to it all, kept up a constant banter. It was a little like driving with Mr. Magoo.
She spoke quickly with an accent I had trouble understanding. Her English was fluent enough for us to communicate with lots and lots of elucidation. She was totally charming, disarming as she talked about the restaurant’s history, the neighborhood, her law degree, and her import/export business.
Her business has an office in London as well as the one in Shanghai, and Amy will add another one in Pittsburgh next year. The Pittsburgh location threw me. She explained it was a great place for minerals. She works 12-hour days and plans to retire when she’s 40. This was my first encounter with an ambitious Chinese entrepreneur, but it would not be my last.
The
restaurant was once the home of a turn-of-the-century European businessman.
Large, elegant rooms framed with dark mahogany paneling. The menu was in Chinese,
of course, without pictures, so no clues for me. I listened and watched while
Amy ordered more and more items, discussing each with the waiter. Do you like
crabs? It’s the season. Do you like fish? He thought you would because
you’re American, and so on.
She ordered us a bottle of Chinese rice wine. It’s like a dark sweet beer. I think she would have preferred red wine -- I know I would have - but we were there to experience a real Chinese meal. We ate lotus blossom root with a rice inlay, egg yolk surrounding salami, egg drop soup, and steamed crab. The sweet and sour fish was fabulous, and I don’t usually go for sweet and sour in the states. The waiter was right. How many of us in the states know what kind of American food Chinese people would enjoy?
When I placed my purse on the floor next to my chair, Amy scooped it up and began her version of Chinese culture 101. People spit inside and out, the extra chair at the table is for your bag. Anything that touches the floor is going to be smeared with a stranger’s mucus. Don’t point your chopsticks at anyone, it’s rude. Never hail a cab with an open palm. And don’t worry about dipping your chopsticks into the communal plate. It’s what you do.
We finished up the night with a drive through the Bund, a must-see for all tourists. Its main street, Nanjing Donglu is truly impressive with beautiful architecture along one side and the Huangpu River on the other. All up and down the mile long strip are historic hotels, museums, concession-era buildings, and embassies. We didn’t get out of the car, it was still raining, and both of us were exhausted. But she thought it was important to show the area to me, in case I didn’t get there on my own.
I was touched by her thoughtfulness. I wasn’t sure if she was doing it out of a sense of duty, pride in her city, or if she was enjoying being a tour guide. Whatever her reasons, I felt welcomed to the city and grateful for the human contact. She then drove me back up Yan’an Lu to my hotel.
Finding An Interpreter
Although I had called and emailed interpreters, ad agencies, friends-of-friends, corporate contacts, and market research companies for weeks ahead of my trip, I had managed to arrange only two interviews the next day with interpreters who, I hoped, would guide me into real Chinese homes.
Both were in the afternoon, so I took advantage of morning free time to visit a little park I’d seen out my hotel window. They call it Jing ‘an Park. It is small but beautiful, sharing the block with a shopping mall nestled between towering hotels, an excavated construction site, and the elevated highway.
At
its center is a large lily pond with scattered concrete fountains, and there
are little caves on the edges. As I walked around, I noticed all the fountains
had clearly visible garden hoses hooked into their backs. There was no attempt
to mask this low-tech solution to the age-old problem. It is what it is. And
so is the noise. Everywhere, jackhammers, traffic and the velvet voices of
pop music wafting through the air.
I met my first interview in the hotel lobby. Chasm Zhang was waiting for me when I got off the elevator. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, he looked about 18. He is, in fact, 29, charming, high energy, married with a 2-year old daughter, and speaks nearly perfect English.
Having held off lunch until our meeting I was hungry, so we moved to the hotel’s café. He’d already eaten, so only ordered orange juice. I ordered raw vegetables and dip. Not knowing the etiquette of the situation, I didn’t want to chow down in front of him.
Like Amy, Chasm was ambitious, worked for himself,
and had a law degree.
He too plans to retire at 40. I asked about his early retirement plan, he
said he’s charging as much, and working as much as he can right now.
That’s a plan.
At one point in our conversation I said something like “God willing”. He then asked me if I was a Christian. I told him no, that I was a fallen-away Catholic. He knew exactly what that meant. Excellent English.
He then told me he’d fallen into a serious depression at 19 when he wasn’t accepted into Harvard. Luckily, he found Jesus through a missionary there, and he’s found comfort in the word of Christ ever since.
When I was in Catholic grade school, we used to collect money for the Pagan Baby Drive. A pagan baby was any baby who hadn’t been baptized as a Catholic. There were plenty of pagan babies in the US but the drive supported missionaries spreading the word in foreign, preferably third world countries like China. For the rest of the interview I wished Chasm were still a pagan.
We talked for nearly 2 hours about his career as an interpreter, Portico, lining up interviews, and the likelihood of the corporate fly flying in China.
He wasn’t optimistic about my plan to spend the night in the homes of Chinese families. Most people don’t have the spare bedroom, he said, and politically, families will be wary because the government structure today is such a slippery slope. Having foreigners spend the night under your roof just might send you tumbling.
According to Chasm, even though many people in China have their own businesses and are making a lot of money now, those things can be confiscated instantly. The law theoretically protects people, but the system is very circuitous, and the reality of how things work may or may not have anything to do with the letter of the law.
Chasm’s day rate was $500 because you never know what tomorrow may bring. He was not available until Tuesday afternoon, but could line up 3 interviews and translate for his day rate.
My second interview was scheduled for 3:30 with a man named Ben. After my extended conversations with Amy and Chasm, I expected the meeting to last at least a couple hours. Ben was late, nothing serious, maybe 10 minutes. But he didn’t want to leave the lobby, and barely sat down with me.
Something had changed since our phone conversation of the night before when Ben had been enthusiastic about translating and setting up interviews. When I’d told him I couldn’t afford to pay each interviewee the equivalent of $250, he admitted he’d already promised families more for the interviews he’d setup. Evidently, when the high payment disappeared, so did interest in the project. Ben didn’t give an explanation for why he was bailing on me.
We sat on lobby sofas while he called Claire, another interpreter, on his cell phone. He handed it to me and waited while Claire and I arranged to speak later that night. She was out of town, returning Saturday night, and could help me out then. As soon as we hung up, Ben took his cell phone and said goodbye.
Claire had sounded fine, but waiting until Sunday to set up interviews would cut things too close for me. Ben had taken himself out of the picture so Chasm it was, even though his day rate was three times higher than my budget.
Shopping with Kathy
My friend Kathy Hirsh has been living in China as an American ex-patriate for a couple years, so I was grateful the next morning when she flew in from Beijing for a whirlwind cultural research and shopping expedition.
We
began in the French Concession and Old Town districts, our first stop being
the Xiangyang Clothing Gifts Market.
As we approached the market, four men descended upon us waving pictures of designer bags inches from our face. Their zest for their work was overwhelming. Kathy kept telling them we didn’t want or need a bag today, but I couldn’t stop laughing, which seemed to fuel their marketing fire. They were unshakeable. They crossed the street with us and took my arm in an attempt to guide me to their stall, all the while chanting Fendi, Coach, and Louie Vuitton in very thick Chinese accents.
The market building itself is a low, rambling, box-like structure. Stalls line both sides of narrow aisles. Vendors sell watches, jewelry, clothing, electronics, and, of course, designer bags. Manicurists selling cosmetics and applying false fingernails seem to occupy every 4th stall. Seeing nothing we wanted, we headed back to the plaza and our hovering sales force.
In the plaza, there are another 300 stalls or so selling pashminas, coats, suits – and, of course, false fingernails. Our hawkers spied us instantly and followed us through the maze of outdoor stalls. When we came to theirs, they proudly gave us a tour.
One of their friends, a particularly flamboyant leather bag hawker, was so intent on proving his product was “real leather,” he held a lighter to the bag to show it wouldn’t burn.
We moved on to the Fish, Bird and Cricket Market, which sells all things fish, bird and, of course, cricket. Crickets are considered good luck in China. If you house a cricket you really want to take care of it. If you need a new cricket, this is your one-stop shop. Since I was returning to the States in less than a week, I didn’t buy a cricket or any cricket paraphernalia, but I was tempted. Who can’t use a little good luck?
A woman sat on the sidewalk pulverizing cricket food using sandpaper and what looked like a car engine part. She crushed it inside a large brown clay mustard jar. She sold the food as well as tiny porcelain dishes for crickets to eat and drink from, little houses/jars for them to live in, CD’s of their tunes to serenade you, and of course, the crickets themselves.
Sunday morning we beat the crowds to the Dongtai Lu Antique Market. It too is outdoors with stalls lining both sides of its aisles. My favorite items were the strands of beads and magnets that can turn into bracelets when the magnets lock onto each other and some very cool miniature wooden mahjong tile bracelets. Kathy bought jewelry not for the beads and stones, but for the intricacies of their slipknots.
Every third stall also sold Mao memorabilia. There were statues, photos, and playing cards with Mao smoking, smiling, frowning sternly, and opening his arms to his people much like Jesus is portrayed with his own flock. China may officially be an atheist country, but those missionaries have definitely left their mark.
We spent the rest of Sunday on the narrow streets
of the Hutong, the old, traditional neighborhood of Shanghai. For a few renminbi
we entered a temple. Its altar was off a courtyard where we lit incense and
placed it in a cart filled with ashes and candle wax. One quarter of the courtyard
was covered with mushrooms drying in the sun. It was pretty casual for a place
of worship - a motorcycle was parked just to the left of the altar –
but inspiring.
Later, we stopped for an hour-long reflexology foot massage. The reflexologists have revolving signs like barber poles outside their establishments. Instead of stripes, however, they have pictures of feet and their corresponding pressure points. We sat in easy chairs while they oiled and kneaded our feet, calves, and thighs. My masseuse wanted to take a knife to my calluses, and I would have let her but Kathy nixed it. She doubted the knife was ever sterilized.
The Hutong felt more exotic to me than any other place in Asia. Very few signs of western civilization’s encroachment could be seen. Or at least they’d all been doused with a Chinese aesthetic. Communal water spigots, small storefronts, funky bicycles, and mahjong tables were all outdoors. Great food was prepared and served right on the street. The fast and loud pace is like that of a large family clamoring to be heard and claiming space and food before it’s all gone.
Our Counterparts in China
One of my missions in China was to find an agency there that was already doing similar work. Through the usual circuitous routes, and only after three days of cell phone tag, I finally got an appointment with ACSR, a market research and statistic-gathering company located just west of the Bund.
Their offices were on the 11th floor of a pretty typical office building. Tian Nongzhen, the account manager and best English speaker in the company led me through a maze of hallways to the conference room where we were met by two women, Elle Xin and Kathy Wang.
We spent most of the next hour laughing and pantomiming our way through introductions and explanations of our business goals and capabilities. Luckily, Tian had a power point presentation in English so I understood the major points. His company could definitely arrange for all the services we would need in China. The meeting ended with us exchanging email addresses and a feeling of big possibilities. A major portion of my mission accomplished, they walked me to the elevator. No one moved until the elevator arrived, I was safely on board and had begun my descent.
Peeking Into China’s Closets
That afternoon Chasm and I had our first interview. Jenny was 52, retired from an office position at a factory that had gone under because its owner embezzled all the profits. Evidently, this is not unusual in China. She now stays at home cleaning and cooking for her husband and 23 year-old daughter.
When I asked if she was happy being a stay-at-home housewife, she said she was completely fine with her situation. She was getting the same amount of money from the government that she made while working. She was receiving China’s version of social security.
She lived in an apartment complex that from the outside looked pretty dicey. Its parking lot was strewn with debris and dilapidated motorcycles. The paint was dirty and peeling on the common hallway walls outside her apartment. Inside, her place was cozy, clean, and well-kept. We sat in the apartment’s largest room. It served as both the master bedroom and the living room.
Jenny had a large bowl of fruit on the coffee table, and kept offering us more of it along with the sweet coffee she’d brewed just for us. She was petite and upbeat, and didn’t hesitate when answering any of my questions.
Since cooking and cleaning were her thing, I asked Jenny to take us shopping so we popped down to the corner fruit and vegetable stand. The store’s owner smiled and cut her great deals for her purchase of grapes and tomatoes. She thanked me later, saying my rolling camera had lowered her costs.
When we got back to her place, she pulled out her wok and cooked us a dish of green beans and fresh crab. The apartment was so small that she had to keep some of her cooking utensils in the bathroom.
When I asked her what electronics she owned, she took us to her daughter’s room and lifted towels to reveal a computer, TV, a DVD player, phone, and stereo system sprinkled around the room. She did the same in her bedroom and the dining room. She explained that keeping dust off of all horizontal surfaces was a daily chore. The pollution is fierce.
Our second interview was with Connie, a 37-year-old woman and John, her 18-year-old son. They lived in Pudong in a brand new condominium complex. Their home was beautiful and modern. She was really proud of it and of all the fixtures and colors she’d picked out. Again, she covered all electronics with a cloth or towels.
She was an accountant who had worked her way up from the sales floor. Her husband worked for a government-run utility. Both were accountants. John was studying to pass the college entrance exams.
John, who was sullen and quiet during most of the interview, perked up when we asked him to give us a tour of his bedroom. His style was much more modern than his mom’s. His desk, chair, and bedding were all very sleek, very chic.
He treated us to a guitar solo. Obviously the beneficiary of his parents disposable income, John had video games, an MP3 player, a cell phone, and, of course, a computer. His closet housed school uniforms and 5 pair of Nikes, although he claimed not to care about brand names.
When I asked Connie about the difference between her life and that of her own parents, she talked only of their monetary differences. Connie said she, her husband, and son worked very hard, and planned to keep working hard so that they never experience the poverty she grew up with.
The final interview was with Rahm, a 27-year-old fitness trainer specializing in ping-pong. He lives with his parents in a very small 4-room apartment. Like Jenny’s, the exterior of Rahm’s building was littered with trash and was in need of paint and repair.
Rahm’s bedroom was just big enough for a single bed, a TV, a chair and small desk. We all crowded into it for the interview. He works a 30-hour week, spending his free time playing video games, badminton, watching sports on TV, and hanging with his friends. His eventual goal is to have his own sporting goods store, although he hadn’t yet done anything to make that dream a reality.
Since he spends the majority of his free time playing video games, Rahm took us shopping for one. We walked four blocks to a small shop selling only PlayStation games. He picked up the one that had just come in. Nothing extraordinary about it except that the game cost him only five renminbi, the equivalent of about 65 cents.
On the way there, Chasm pointed out five different whorehouses disguised as barbershops. When I asked how to tell a barbershop from a small brothel, he told me the amount of makeup and length of skirt the proprietors wear.
Chasm proved to be a great interpreter, at ease and friendly. He explained what wasn’t apparent to a westerner, and always carried my heaviest bag. All the interviewees were willing to participate, to open up their homes, closets, refrigerators, and to share their dreams and goals with me. The possibility of The Fly really happening was looking more and more likely.
A Guiding Hand
My last morning in Shanghai, I noticed a grandfather walking with a toddler in the park. The grandfather was protective, reaching out an arm to buffer the impending fall whenever the boy stumbled or began to keel over. The boy was a brand new walker, the weight of his torso following the momentum of his attention, with his feet scrambling to keep the rest of his body off the ground. The old man’s touch and guidance was gentle and caring, and filled with the knowledge of what harm can come from one misstep. The boy loved the power in his independence, and was trying to outrun the protective arms of his grandfather.
The toddler saw me and made a beeline for my camera - intrigued and delighted with the new and different. The grandfather saw me too and tried to head the boy off at the pass. He was still gentle and smiling, but had no intention of letting the boy get close to me. The boy pointed to me, the grandfather pointed in another direction. They stopped on the sidewalk, new China wanting to go one way while old China wanted to take a different route.
The toddler kept moving in my direction, the grandfather kept veering him in a different one. Eventually, the man and boy traveled away from me, but the direction was one of compromise, not the one the grandfather wanted, and definitely not the one the toddler wanted. Once the boy can walk safely without his grandfather's protective arms, you know he won’t accept that compromise.