Collective Heatsroke

168 days without rain and counting. The sun shone down with the intensity of a blow-torch and, slowly, everyone's heat control systems failed. As the last drops of moisture were sucked out of the earth, big cracks opened in the dusty earth and even the last of the mandacaru cacti began to shrink in the heat. With the onset of widespread heatstroke, the entire populace began to suffer from a sort of collective incoherence, and a sense of inebriation seeped slowly into the soft bones of the sertanejos.

While those who were still alive began to slip into a state of semi-consciousness, the dead began to raise their heads.

Some might say that they came back simply to fill the space left by the rapidly fading "living;" others may claim that they had been there to begin with, unnoticed by those too busy being alive but who could now meet them half way. The explanation is actually quite simple: in the last few months the wind had changed.

Jackie

When I remember the first time I met Jackie I always laugh to myself. It's strange looking back on that day not so many months ago when I first let her into my apartment.

It was a sunny morning in September, the weather in Changsha still hot. I was drinking Oolong tea and offered her some. She brushed past me, said no, no, waving her hand, heels clicking on the floor.

"Where will we have class?"

My little office at the back, detached from the breeze that runs through the house -- the sort of room that is unbearably stuffy in summer and freezing cold in the winter. We sat on the pull-out couch.

She wanted to give me a test, know about my Chinese level, look at my textbook -- I didn't have one?

I'd been expecting Jackie with a sort of nervous anxiety, curious as to what she'd be like. I observed with a certain skepticism her dress and high heels and the sweat droplets on her nose and upper lip. I wondered if I had a choice and began to dread meeting with her 3 mornings a week. Her voice bounced off the bare walls of my still empty office and rang in my ears. It hurt. I wondered if she would stop talking or if she was capable of not screaming.

After the third or so class I decided to fight fire with fire. Every time Jackie asked me a question I'd shout the answer at her equally loudly and in as high a pitch as I could without going too far above the normal range of my voice. I bet it hurt and I wondered if she'd catch on.

"Stop it!", she shouted, "Why are you shouting?" she shouted.

"You're shouting too!" I shouted.

And just like that we resumed our lessons in a more normal tone of voice.

Jackie quickly became my go-to person. I need to open a bank account, move, find an apartment, buy a purse, whatever -- she always has endless suggestions and will make me go 3 hours out of my way in the humid heat of Changsha to save 5 yuan -- less than a dollar. She's one of my dearest friends in China now and I can't help but smile at my first impressions (read dread) of her and what must have been her first impressions of me.

Jackie is loud and I love her for it, especially now that she doesn't shout at me when we have class anymore. She talks endlessly and non-stop; her new dress, the new dumpling place down the street, her work, her professors, her mother, her money, her dreams... and she laughs loud and hearty which is such a rare quality in demur Chinese females. She has an endless appetite, too, and so many of our conversations revolve around the latest thing she ate or what she hopes to eat next -- I always wonder at her slim figure.

We shop together and eat together, I've even "dragged" her to bars a few times, which she insists are evil degenerate places and that she won't drink but she finishes her beer and is always reluctant to leave at the end of the night.

Jackie's favorite phrases:
Romi 你太可爱了！ ("Romi you are too cute!" -- I cannot overstate the frequency with which she says this)
Romi 我太喜欢你了，怎么办？ ("Romi I like you too much, what to do?" -- said ALOT)
Romi 我看见你就想笑！ ("Romi when I see you I just want to laugh" -- Her excuse for laughing all the time)
Romi 这件衣服好看吗？ ("Romi are these clothes pretty?" -- every morning)
Romi 我穿这件衣服好看吗？ ("Romi do I look good in these clothes?" -- every morning immediately following the one above)
Romi 这里的（insert food item）非常，非常好吃！("Romi the (insert food item) here are really, really delicious!" -- every 20 or so meters if we are walking outside)
Romi 你觉得我胖了吗？ (Romi do you think I gained weight? -- immediately following any comment on the deliciousness of any food)

(mis)-Quoted!

The Olympic Torch was relayed through Changsha last Wednesday June 4th and I, along with a handful of other foreign teachers at Hunan University, was invited to attend the opening ceremonies. The relay in Changsha was set to start at the foot of the Yuelu Academy in the heart of the university campus at 8:18 in the morning (the auspicious 8) and university officials saw it as a prime time to show off some of their foreign faculty, going so far as to call it a "free marketing opportunity". I personally felt lucky to view the entire thing from a privileged position without having to fight my way through the crowds of enthusiastic Chinese college students.

The photo above and many variations of it ended up in several of the cities main newspapers as well as several online news sources. I was asked by one of the flag-bearers at the ceremony to hold the flag while he snapped some pictures and in seconds became the target of about 20 trigger-happy photographers for the local news who jumped at the opportunity to capture a shot of a foreigner holding a Chinese flag. What better way to sell newspapers and calm fears of foreign dissenters, protestors, tibetan sympathizers and the like?

Most of the reporters captioned the photo with "Hunan University Foreign Exchange Student", a few got "Foreign Teacher" right. But what bothered me the most was a particular caption in which the reporter quoted me as having said "我今天是长沙人" -- which literally translates to "today I am a Changsha person". I never said that! Most of the photographers didn't ever bother to even ask me anything, assuming I couldn't speak Chinese. I never said anything!

The message itself doesn't personally offend me. I love Changsha. But the fact that the press has absolutely no qualms about literally pulling words out of thin air and passing them on as my own? Hello professionalism? Accountability? Truth? I did not have a chance to see any of the other newspapers where my photo got printed, but I would not be surprised to find that similar misquotations happened elsewhere.

It's hard for me to say if this is singularly a Chinese phenomenon or not. I have never really been interviewed or photographed by a newspaper back home or anywhere else for that matter. But when I learnt that a Japanese friend of mine living in China had been quoted in a newspaper as apologizing in the name of Japan to the Chinese people for the atrocities committed by the Japanese in WWII I couldn't help but make some assumptions.

The Chinese are generally very patriotic and extremely touchy when it comes to foreign perceptions of China and the image of China in the foreign media. Historically they are a society that has closed itself off to the outside world for millennia. As they struggle to deal with these issues and with creating a new image of China in the world one wonders about the role of the Chinese media in defining the country's image for the Chinese people themselves. I can't help feeling that the media here has a tendency to jump at opportunities to portray foreign approval of China (a broad generalization, I know), whether through making up quotes that they wish they had heard or through overindulging in an opportunistic photo op.

Buzz

Everyone knows about the earthquake. Both in China and abroad news of the wreckage, the dead and the injured is everywhere. It has been 2 weeks and one cannot turn on a TV here and find news on anything else. It is shown on buses, in restaurants, even at the gym. The coverage of the disaster in China is reminiscent of the coverage of the September 11th attacks in the US in 2001; the images of the injured, the rubble, the brave young heros risking their lives to find signs of life in the destruction are replayed constantly, everywhere.

Broken buildings, broken bodies, broken families and hearts.

The western media has on the whole praised the Chinese government for its quick response and for the relative freedom it has allowed the press in communicating the disaster and its figures to the public. Yet what no-one is really talking about is the heightened tension in the air, this electric buzz that can be heard throughout the country right now.

The Chinese people are talking. The voices are small and the channels narrow, but there is a subversive voice coming out in hushed whispers between college students, bloggers and the parents of children who have died due to the use of substandard building materials in the construction of schools. Protests that are not being aired. Images that are not being broadcast.

In ancient China the advent of a large earthquake was taken as a sign from God of changing political times and a turnover of the rulers of the country. I even learnt the other day that the first rudimentary instruments used to detect quakes were developed in ancient China and used by sages to predict the collapse of dynasties. Although these are old superstitions, I did ask some of my young Chinese friends about them and all of them knew what I was talking about. So while the young people in cities don't tend to believe such things anymore, they still persist in the background of folk wisdom and knowledge. No doubt the government is aware of this.

There are also a myriad of stories circulating online that are not being broadcast on national television. A town invaded by thousands of frogs just a day or so before the quake turned to the local government and asked whether a quake was expected. They were told no and went back to their homes, only to be crushed as buildings collapsed in the quake the next day. The government withheld information. The government lied. The government allowed people to die. People in isolated areas are literally killing each other over scarce resources such as food and water. Soldiers of the PLA are fighting the homeless victims over provisions. Whether or not these stories are true is not up to me to determine, and they are very likely exaggerated. At least some must be told by opportunists or attention seekers -- disasters like this tend to create these kinds of conspiracy theories. Yet it is the fact that this is happening that fascinates me. There is a certain nervousness to it all, like watching an R-rated movie in your living room while your parents are out of the house. And everywhere people are talking about it in hushed whispers, when they're sure nobody's watching.

The tension is exacerbated by the build-up to the fast-approaching Olympic Games and the clamp-down on all sorts of social unrest that has been going on all over China. I noticed more police cars on the streets of provincial Changsha, and extended patrols. One police car has taken to coming into my closed off living community every evening and it unnerved me the first couple of times I saw it -- policemen looking out of the vehicles' windows and shining flashlights, as if looking for some fugitive. But it's been happening every night for a while now and has just become a part of the routine.

I myself, along with all the other foreign teachers who had at some point this year left the country, were called into the local Public Security Bureau this afternoon. They wanted to confirm our addresses, see our passports and visas. One of the other teachers told me that in her 5 years of teaching here she had never been there -- I have been there 3 times already having arrived last September. The importance of registering with the PSB within 24 hours of returning to the country after a trip was drilled into me yet again. They're keeping tabs.

Know Your Mother

Mother's Day was just yesterday -- probably the only holiday celebrated in China in just the same way as it is celebrated in the West: gifts, flowers, cards, dining out.

Being on the other side of the world, I called my mother to let her know I was thinking of her and that yes, it was Mother's Day in China, too. And then I read Thomas Friedman's column in the New York Times, "Call Your Mother". It really rung a bell with me.

Growing up is about a lot of things but something that seldom gets talked about is how, for better or for worse, so much about growing up is getting to know your mother. It is amazing how selfish we are as children in our belief that mother is just mother, nothing but mother, that her sole purpose and duty in life is to be mother, to mother, to care for us. I try to think back and recall just how long I had held this belief.

It is much later that one realizes, to one's distress, that mother is really just a girl who grew up. That someday I may be mother myself.

"Your mother had dreams too" says Friedman.

Reminiscent of a famous Brazilian song that goes:

"Voce culpa seus pais por tudo,
Isso e absurdo.
Sao criancas como voce,
O que voce vai ser quando voce crescer."

This translates to something like:

"You blame your parents for everything,
That's absurd.
They are children like yourself,
What you will be when you grow up."

Mango Lassi

The first time I was introduced to the mango lassi I could not help but be skeptical. Milk? With mangos? I had long since freed myself of the superstitions that had haunted me as a young child (or so I thought), but to be so outwardly defiant of them? To deliberately mix milk with mangos was, to me, akin to deliberately going out of your way to walk under a ladder. Why risk it?

But boy was I (and all Brazilian nay-sayers) wrong! Those Indians sure know how to make an exciting, refreshing drink! And who could blame them, with the soaring summer temperatures in the sub-continent and an abundance of tropical fruits?

Once you go lassi you never go back, and I have from that day on always ordered a mango one when I go to an Indian restaurant -- no death by abdominal cramping, I promise!

Could it possibly be true that for every food-related superstition there exists an equal and opposite delicious recipe on the other side of the world?


I bought 3 pounds of ripe mangos the other day and in the hot muggy weather we've been getting lately here in Changsha they were very quickly going overripe.

I made the mango I could not finish into a delicious mango lassi using the recipe below, found at Simple Recipes (no cardamom in mine):

Mango Lassi Recipe -

INGREDIENTS:
1 cup plain yogurt
1/2 cup milk
1 cup chopped mango (peeled and stone removed)
4 teaspoons sugar, to taste
A dash of ground cardamom (optional)

METHOD:
Put mango, yogurt, milk, sugar and cardamom into a blender and blend for 2 minutes, then pour into individual glasses, and serve. Can sprinkle with a little cardamom.
The lassi can be kept refrigerated for up to 24 hours.
Makes about 2 cups.

Enjoy!

Don't put your finger in your belly-button

Old wives' tales and senseless superstitions are an integral part of growing up in Brazil. Much more so than most of my big city friends, I was exposed to Brazilian folklore through vacations spent in the much poorer and rural parts of the country, in the arid northeast with my father's side of the family or on long summer vacations at a farm owned by my uncle in the interior of Sao Paulo state.

Growing up in a cosmopolitan city with access to an international education, however, quickly moved me away from the tendency of children to take such tales literally. I was defiant and challenged them head-on with a somewhat callous attitude. I recall for instance, a nanny who warned me not to put my finger in my belly-button lest I do some sort of irreversible damage to my digestive tract. A finger in a belly-button could result in sudden death.

"That's not true, I've put my finger in my belly-button before", I challenged. And after a moment's trepidation I stuck my finger in my belly-button, wiggling it around for good measure.

Silence.

The poor nanny's face was ashen. She looked like she was either going to be sick, or faint. Maybe both.

"Never do that again" she said, in a hoarse whisper.

"Why not?" I asked, sticking my finger in my belly-button again, more confident this time that I wasn't going to die a sudden and painful death.


Despite such stubbornness on my part I must admit that it was sort of scary to defy my nanny and stick my finger in my belly-button. Surviving the incident came somewhat as a relief -- after all, what if she was right? And the extent to which some of those beliefs stuck with me was only to be realized many years later.