Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
Stefan's been in China forawhile. Where's the email? Where's the email? Where's the email stef? Whatya been doing? How many Chinese wife's you got? Do they know you're not a communist yet? Have you worked out how to make billions of dollars out of billions of chinese so we can all buy a pacific island and live happilly ever after, naked and frolicking in nature, like we were supposed to do?
The truth. The truth! I'm a foreigner in a familiar land. The three syllables, "wai-guo-ren", float around me like a unique body odour. Waiguoren means foreigner, and as I walk down the street, climb the mountain, wonder why I have to show my passport at the internet cafe, this word surrounds me. It jumps out of the irrepresible little mouths of young children like a cat out of a hat, "Look. Mum. Waiguoren!". It is muttered by old couples, by families. Jesus - the dogs who used to bark at me, only me, at my apartment block every day, seem now to have been secretly barking my fellow residents to attention: "waiguoren, waiguoren, waiguoren!". Sometimes I will hear it and jump to attention, turn my head, hoping to shock the
person who uttered the words, thinking that this will maybe make them more wary, that I do understand, that I am not a totally oblivious vessel from a different world.
But then, The East is advancing toward The West. Or the west is seeping into the east like algae growing in a stagnant old pond - depending on how you look at it. Old classic American hits waft out of record stores. Department stores have top brand fashion outlets, coffee chains, toilets that don't require you to squat. In Shanghai, Pepsi and Coke battle for streetscape supremacy. Pepsi signs line the streetlights of a boulevard here; a six-storey coke bottle on a building corner there. In this sense, it's all a bit like home really.
So yes, I'm a foreigner in a familiar land. And I feel, well, I feel pretty good. Don't think I could do it forever, but right now (stomach issues, and me being a cultural anomaly, aside) China is an enjoyable place for stefan to be.
BUT I WANNA GO HOME!!!! HELP!!!!!!!!!!
...just kidding ;)
Saturday, August 12, 2006
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