I've seen a lot of fakes, during my time in China, and especially a lot of Snoopy stuff  — none of which, I'm sure, the estate of Charles Schultz ever saw a penny from. But I must say, this is the first time I've seen Spoony!

The Dowry Drama

The other day, we got a call asking us to go with Ma Lei’s family to a village near Shenyang, the home village of Ma Lei’s brother’s girlfriend, during the upcoming National Day holiday week. The girlfriend’s family is having a hastily-convened party to celebrate the couple. There will be another wedding in Dalian next year, so this is a kind of pre-wedding for the bride’s family.

This is obviously a momentous gathering, but it would not typically be surprising for a Chinese couple that’s been dating for two years. Casual dating is still taboo in China, so there’s no particular marking of a couple’s engagement. Rather than a single momentous and publicly-announced commitment, Chinese couples from the start are on a slippery slope toward marriage. So the only reason this event is particularly exciting is that, a mere month ago, the couple now to be married had broken up, at the insistence of the young woman’s parents — the very same people who are now hosting the celebration.

Ma Lei’s brother is 27 years old, a nice kid with a broad smile, a good job and, as of just a few weeks ago, his own brand-new apartment. This last is extremely important, because most Chinese girls will only marry a man who owns his own home.

His girlfriend is 23, quite a pleasant girl and, in most people’s opinion, quite beautiful. She comes from an upper-middle-class family and seems to have been a typically pampered Chinese daughter. The Chinese say that, whereas a son is a workhorse, a daughter is like a flower to be watered and cared for, so there were a few bumps the first couple of times she visited the family village. I don’t think she’d ever been expected to help clear the table after a family dinner, for instance, which earned her an angry talking-to from Ma Lei’s father. One thing there are not, in Ma Lei’s family, are spoiled brats (male or female). Despite those early hitches, she eventually figured things out well enough to be accepted into the family. Her name is Cao Dan (曹丹).

The young couple have been together for two years, but they’re a little young to be getting married. The typical age for a woman to marry is 26-28, so it was a slight surprise when, a week or two after our wedding, Cao Dan’s family made the trip to visit Ma Lei’s family.

The families got along as well as is necessary, and probably sometime toward the end of the weekend it was made explicit that neither family would object to the union. It was somewhat remarkable that Cao Dan’s moderately wealthy family would consent to their daughter’s marrying a son of the poor. Many wealthy Chinese families would automatically nix any such union across economic class, especially if the male partner is the one born into poverty.

Shortly before they left, Cao Dan’s family named a dowry. They wanted 40,000 rmb, a bit more than $6000 US, in order to let their daughter marry Ma Lei’s brother.

A demand like this would be incredibly shocking in America, but it’s less so in China. Traditionally, a woman once married was considered to have been absorbed into her husband’s family (or swallowed up by it), and was no longer a member of her birth family. Generally she would see them occasionally, but not often. Ma Lei’s mother, for example, recently paid a month-long visit to her family home in the far north of China, her first such visit in 20 years or so. Hence the husband’s family was, in effect, buying the wife away from her family, repaying them for the expense of raising a girl who would thereafter contribute nothing to their family — and, incidentally, giving parents of girls incentive to see to their proper upbringing so as to command a reasonable dowry when the time came.

But in today’s China, this tradition is (to put it mildly) vestigial. A woman is no longer bound by the Confucian “three subordinations” (to her father before marriage, her husband after marriage, and her sons after her husband dies). Though they’re not always treated this way, women are now independent persons with the same rights as men, rather than servants to be passed from one household to another. Nowadays, there just isn’t any good reason for a dowry.

In this case, it’s even more unjustified. Ma Lei’s family are poor farmers. They don’t have a water heater, a washing machine, or a computer — let alone a spare $6000 to give to the relatively wealthy family from Shenyang. The effrontery of the demand was made all the more obnoxious by the fact that it took place in the family’s farmhouse, surrounded by ample evidence of its absurdity.

Of course, the girlfriend’s parents have eyes to see that Ma Lei’s family have no money. They likewise know that a 27 year-old young man, particularly one who just bought an apartment, doesn’t have 40,000 rmb in the bank. Hence I’m inclined to suspect that it was slightly more than a coincidence that this demand came a mere couple of weeks after Ma Lei’s marriage to an American. Most Chinese people assume all foreigners are rich, so they probably assumed I’d given Ma Lei’s family a dowry at least as large as the one they were asking for.

Ma Lei got the call from her father late that Sunday afternoon, asking her to help her brother.

Ma Lei is a proud Chinese, and fiercely protective of those parts of Chinese cultural tradition she approves of — such as reverence for her father — but even more fiercely independent. I know of few languages better suited to the expression of anger than Chinese, and Ma Lei wields it for that purpose expertly. Though I didn’t know the substance of the conversation, I knew that I wouldn’t want to be on the other end of that phone call, even though it was her own father she was arguing with.

She gave no quarter, during that conversation or afterwards explaining the situation to me. We don’t save money and eat noodles, she told me, to give our money to someone else. “It’s our money, not theirs,” she insisted indignantly. But the strain of conflict with her father was heavy on her, and she slept little that night.

The issue came up again once or twice, not frequently, but it’s been in the background ever since. About a month ago, Brother and his girlfriend came for an overnight visit at our new apartment, their first time staying with us overnight. I don’t know if it was intended as an advertisement for the couple, but a few days later Brother asked Ma Lei to give money for Cao Dan’s family.

Immediately after putting her brother in his place, Ma Lei called Cao Dan to deliver her a long lesson in personal finance. After pointing out the obvious about her parents’ poverty, she listed just a few of the many priorities She and I have for our money, ahead of giving it to the girlfriend’s parents. (To name just one, this was right about the time Ma Lei was going into the hospital for very expensive fertility treatments.) By the end of the conversation the girlfriend had been reduced to tears, but she finally understood that there was to be no dowry for her parents.

A couple of weeks later, the girlfriend’s Renren feed (Chinese Facebook) carried a short, distraught announcement. Her parents had withdrawn their consent for the marriage, so she and Ma Lei’s brother had broken up. (As readers of my writings will know, Chinese parents have veto power over their children’s romantic relationships.)

A week went by, then another. Then Ma Lei’s father got a call from the girl’s mother. “Why did your son break up with our daughter?” Now she’s distraught, she cries all night, she doesn’t sleep.

This time it was Father’s turn to do a little place-putting. Our son did no such thing, Father told them, it was you who broke them up with your demand for money we don’t have.

Suddenly, by magic, not only have the kids gotten back together, but the two families have been called together outside Shenyang for a pre-wedding celebration. As nearly as I understand it, this will not be an actual wedding ceremony — there’s no time for that — but a family party. It’s common in Chinese families for each family to throw its own party, partly to make sure that the money their guests are expected to give will go to the right family.

I think, but I’m not certain, that the couple will perform their legal marriage at this time, but the big ceremony in Dalian will happen next year. In China, unlike in the West, there’s no such thing as a wedding license to be actuated at a civil or religious ceremony. Rather, the registration with the government is one’s legal wedding, and the ceremony is purely pro forma. Some couples wait years after getting legally married before they bother with the big family celebration.

We will, of course, be going along for this quasi-wedding/peace summit between the families. And of course, if anything interesting happens, I will be sure to write it up for your amusement! 

Philosophy in Action interview

Teaching in China: Wednesday Interview on Philosophy in Action Radio On Wednesday evening, I'll be a guest on philosopher Dr. Diana Hsieh's live internet radio show, Philosophy in Action, to discuss "Teaching in China."

• What: Philosophy in Action Talk Radio: Robert Garmong on Teaching in China
• Who: Dr. Diana Hsieh, with Robert Garmong, plus live callers
• When: Wednesday, 19 September 2012, 6 pm PT / 7 pm MT / 8 pm CT / 9 pm ET / 9 am 20 September Beijing Standard Time
• Where: Philosophy in Action's Live Studio

What can we learn about modern Chinese culture from the experience of an American teaching university students in China? A whole lot! Professor Robert Garmong has a unique perspective on China and Chinese education, as an American teaching English language and Western culture at the Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, in Dalian, China. To join the live broadcast and its chat, just point your browser to Philosophy in Action's Live Studio a few minutes before the show is scheduled to start. By listening live, you can call the show with your questions and experiences, as well as post comments and questions in the text chat. If you miss the live broadcast, you'll find the audio from the episode posted here: 19 September 2012: Teaching in China. Please join us on Wednesday evening for an engaging discussion of "Teaching in China"!

Here's how to piss off the top bosses of the Chinese Ministry of Finance and Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, without even knowing you're doing it.

Earlier today, I noticed that the long wall of poster board which is typical filled with photos of students in tee shirts with fairly bad English, along with stories in Chinese which (as far as I can tell) seem to describe them doing impressive-sounding things, had been replaced by a wall of Communist Party stories — Long March stuff, Mao stuff, Lei Fang stuff, etc. One of my students this morning told me that the Beijing Ministry of Finance was having a big-big-BIG-wig meeting in our department this afternoon, but I'd quite forgotten it. I am sometimes a ben dan — dumb egg.

Our campus has pretty frequent meetings of black-Audi-driving People More Important Than Me, but this time the PMITM's were a lot more important than average.

At an American university, if you had a giant PMITM meeting it would be discussed, perhaps debated (because there would surely be  dissenters), and at the very least announced. Here, the only announcement came the night before: "Please don't use the West Gate of the building [Chinese uses the same word for gate and door], because it will be closed for maintenance." Maintenance — yeah, right.

So in all ignorance, this afternoon I rode my bike in to meet with a student who's interested in studying in America for grad school. I'd volunteered to help her and other people, so my afternoon off of teaching was to spent helping her make study plans.

As the small, little announcement had indicated, in anticipation of the arrival of the PMITM's, the main door to our department was closed off. It was festooned with a thick red carpet and gargantuan, expensive cones of flowers paid for by The People and intended to warn dumb eggs like me that Here There Be PMITMs. PMITM's love such things, but I tend not to pay enough attention to them. I just walked around to the other side of the building, uttering curses at the PMITM's.

I came in the back side, carrying my bike because I don't have a lock anymore. A Person Less Important Than Me cut halfway through it in the attempt to steal my bike during the winter holiday. In 39 years in America, no one EVER attempted to steal my bike, so I love when my Chinese students lecture me about the high crime rate in America.

When I reached the second floor, I found a huge gaggle of perhaps 20 Chinese boss-men, chatting with each other, all smoking cigarettes right in the middle of a no-smoking building. They were accompanied by a small band of beautiful college students dressed in long and body-hugging traditional-style cheongsam dresses. 

I recognized one of my former students, a girl called Jessie, who is legendarily tall, elegant, and beautiful. Whenever our university has dignitaries visiting, Jessie is guaranteed to be there, wearing the requisite cheongsam and wide, friendly smile. Someone in our administration hopes she will never graduate.

I was happy to see Jessie again, but I wasn't looking for friendly conversation. 

My parents instilled in me a lifelong contempt for cigarette smoke, to which was recently added a major dose of adult-onset asthma. I literally cannot safely be in a smoke-filled room anymore, or I could wind up in a hospital. So when I came to the second floor, intending to do my job, and met with a wall of cigarette smoke — in an area clearly marked NO SMOKING — I was miffed.

I asked Jessie if she could please inform these men that they aren't allowed to smoke in the hallways of our college, as is clearly marked on all the entrances. She didn't exactly say yes or no, she just… shrank. She tried hopelessly to avoid my eyes, but just before terror overtook her I felt a hand clap down on my shoulder.

This was Ming Zhao (name changed to protect the guilty) a nasty, smiling little ball of inhumanity who comes to my mid-chest in height, intellect, integrity, and all other manly qualities except for Communist Party influence. In that regard, he is a boss whom even our Chinese Dean has to fear.

Ming Zhao said, with a giant smile on his face, "It's nice to see you. Now please go out." He literally pushed me down the hall, through the pall of cigarette smoke, toward where I'd propped my bike against my office door. He didn't even make an attempt at respect or propriety, didn't give me a hint of dignity, just threw me away like the yangguizi I am. I coughed a bit, but kept my lungs mostly inside my chest as I sped down the hall like a cat flung out a window who tries to pretend "that's exactly what I wanted to do." 

Ming Zhao sent a student minion after me, ostensibly to inquire after my health, but mostly to make sure that I didn't return. The student, being young and therefore not too skilled in the art of being Chinese, didn't make a very good fake at caring whether my lungs were okay. He only managed to convey that My Presence Is Not Welcome among the PMITM's.

I found my student, cleared my lungs enough that I could talk, and then found a place near a window where I could breathe outside air. You can believe I was massively motivated to help her find an opportunity to go to America for graduate studies — or for anything else, for that matter. At that moment, I would have helped anyone escape this country.

This small incident was entirely my fault. Ming Zhao shouldn't have needed to remind me that in China, the leadership doesn't have to follow the rules that everyone else follows. It's only my foolishly reflexive American perspective that makes me expect consistency, integrity, and the rule of law. Such notions lead only to disaster here in the People's Republic of China.

RG

As it turns out, female bosses in China can suck, too, they just suck differently. And not all male bosses suck, either.

The district manager for Ma Lei's company is a man who sounds very professional. He's the one who, first week she was at work in the store, hinted to her that she's a future manager at a store with higher sales than this one, if she wants to be. The current store manager, though, is a female ben dan. "Ben dan" means literally "dumb egg," which is Chinese for dumb-ass. This particular ben dan has always been a manager, never actually worked the floor, yet she thinks she knows how to boss Ma Lei around — in short, her head is way up her eggs.

It's a long story not worth telling in detail, but yesterday the manager ordered three hefty boxes shipped, and when the delivery guy came he had Ma Lei pay him 12 yuan apiece (about $1.80). The manager-egg somehow had the idea that it was supposed to be 12 yuan for all three boxes — a preposterously low price — and she demanded that Ma Lei pay the extra $3.60. Ma Lei was incensed!

Now, I grant you that $3.60 is small change, arguably worth just sloughing off. But a) we're talking about a $225 a month job, so $3.60 isn't such small change, and much more importantly, b) this is Ma Lei, who will apologize to an ant for stepping on it inadvertently, but won't take shit for something she didn't do wrong.

This happened late in the day, just before Ma Lei was coming home. I'd been working all day, and my head was still in the computer when she came home at 6:00. I still hadn't prepared for today's class, nor had I broached my day's writing assignment, but I could see that she was in about as high a dudgeon as I've seen her in.

She kept apologizing to me for interrupting my work, but I wasn't the least bit upset. I told her I didn't fall in love with a noodle, nor did I want to. (That's the only way I knew how to explain it in Chinese.) She told me I was on my own for dinner, and then she disappeared into the bedroom to phone up her network of friends and coworkers she knew who had worked with courier companies in the past. 

She wanted moral support from her friends, but more than that she was checking the facts: was there any way the manager-egg had been right, all three boxes should have been shipped for $1.80? Of course they all said "no way." I could have told her that, but she wanted to be rock-solid certain rather than do anything rash. (I love this girl!)

After a little more than hour of combined venting and fact-checking, she hit the phone to call the district manager at 7:30 at night. She'd warned me about this, and she gave me an opportunity to dissuade her, but I didn't do it: she called him, with my full blessing. If I hadn't been raised with a mom who got work-related phone calls at hours well past 7:30 at night, I might have told her to wait till the next morning, but I was, and I didn't. I wanted that district manager to hear what Ma Lei had to say.

Her friend had told her not to speak to the district manager in a loud or harsh or proud voice, but Ma Lei told her friend "why should I be a noodle? He's not Mao Ze Deng, he's not Obama, why should I be afraid?" And indeed there was pride in her voice, though also respect.

Have I mentioned that I love this girl?

I think that what she told him is the most amazing part. I understood a good bit of it, then she gave me a simplified version afterward. After explaining the facts to him, she made it clear that her problem was not the money. It was very important to her that he think well of her, and if she walked away from her job over this $3.60, he not think that she had failed or done something wrong.

He asked if she wanted some sort of payment from him, and she said no, I don't want your money. He might have been a little perplexed by that, and he asked why she wanted the job at all, if she doesn't need money. She told him. "I don't want to be a lazy bug, staying home all day. I want something to do." If, however, the job conditions are such that she doesn't feel respected, she will "say gubai" — i.e., "goodbye."

She emerged from the bedroom proud, excited, confident, yet exhausted. She apologized for not having made me dinner, which (she said) is a wife's job. "I am a bad wife," she said. I couldn't disagree more.

About an hour later, Ma Lei's phone started registering calls from her ben-dan boss, every fifteen minutes or so. This was a mistake, on the boss's part, because Ma Lei was in no state of mind to speak with this woman, but the woman nevertheless tried for a couple of hours. Then she sent an apologetic text message saying "I misunderstood," and "you didn't understand me." Ma Lei saw it, but did not respond.

It was at once an act of cruelty and of charity for Ma Lei to ignore her boss's attempts to communicate. 

Of course, the manager-egg had heard from the district manager, and she must have been filled with fear and shame. 

If man is indeed a rational animal, and communication is best done in clear and reasoned tones — and if the store manager wished to hear anything that might soothe her abashment — last night was not the time for her to attempt to apologize to my dear, feisty wife. As Ma Lei herself said, you can push her around a lot, as long as it's reasonable, but once you've crossed a line her tongue is like a sword that will cut you in half. (That was her exact metaphor.)

I must confess that Ma Lei took some pleasure in her boss's apparent discomfiture. Whereas the first half of the night had been spent in anger, the second half was spent in slightly choumei gloating. Neither way was she going to sleep, and indeed she kept me up an hour after I needed to be asleep before my 12-hour Tuesday marathon, but I couldn't begrudge her a minute of her little triumph. Realizing that her desire to stay up was going to kill my workday, she took a Benadryl and collapsed.

Her job doesn't matter a jot, in the grand scheme of our lives. She could quit it, and we wouldn't notice the financial difference. But she wants to work, and I want a wife who wants to work. There's freedom in work, and there's pride, and there's independence. I don't want her to have to ask me for every penny — not because I can't afford it, but because I don't want her to have to ask it — and she doesn't want to have to ask.

She's off now, at work. I've not heard a thing from her about today's experience. The boss-egg-woman is seldom in the store, so it's likely that Ma Lei didn't see her all day. Nor did Ma Lei particularly want to talk to her. I think she just wants to continue doing her job and ignore that there was ever a conflict. And in the process, let the boss-egg-lady know who's really boss.

Glad I'm not a woman in China!

Ma Lei was in line for a really good job at a financial services company. She passed two tests, and was one of two people (out of more than 100) under consideration. The job didn't pay much to begin with, only about $225 a month, but there was a steep career curve available after the first two months.


Then she got a call: for only $7500, she could have the job. That is to say — if she gives the manager $7500, he'll choose her for the job. Apparently it's not that uncommon in China to demand about half a year's salary, up-front, as a bribe to get a good job. (I imagine Rod Blagojevich would be quite jealous.)

Then a day or two later, she was headed for another job interview. She climbed on to a hyper-crowded bus, squished in front of a late-50s man. After a while, she started to feel a little "stirring" behind her at waist level. She moved out of the way, but the man followed to press his "stirring" into her again. She moved again, and again he followed her. Finally, she shouted to the bus driver to stop, saying in full voice exactly why. The old dirty old man turned red and fled the bus.


Her job interview went a lot better than the ride to get there. She was hired immediately, without having to go through the usual multiple layers of interviews. Ma Lei's friend who works at the company told her that rarely happens, so the manager who interviewed her must have been quite impressed with her.


First day of work, Ma Lei's new boss said he would like to take her out for lunch. Great. At lunch, after a little talk about the job, the people in the office, etc., he leaned forward told her she's very beautiful. Next, he asked her to go to a hotel with him. Now she's looking for Job #3. 


First boss asked for money, second boss asked for sex. What's left for the third one to ask for? First-born child?

Two Chinas, Two Americas

Our landlady called Ma Lei last night to ask if we could possibly do her a big favor and pay our next three months' rent (about $1500) a few weeks early. As it happens, I had the money available to me, so I was able to hand it over now instead of at the end of the month.

She stated the reason for needing the money early as: her son is going to study overseas, and she has to make some sort of payment post-haste. That seemed a little odd, because she surely would've known the deadlines in advance and, as a Chinese parent hyper-concerned about her child's education, saved for it assiduously. I kind of figured she was fibbing, but I didn't expect ever to find out the real truth.

To my surprise, after Ma Lei had given the landlady my money, the woman decided to tell her the real story. It's anybody's guess why the landlady felt like telling her, or what subtext she intended to convey to my wife about the evils and treachery of America.

The landlady's brother went three years ago, without a visa, to live in the States, Los Angeles, as a cook in a Chinese restaurant. A couple of days ago, the brother was killed in a robbery. The brother is in the States illegally, so the government won't do a thing about his body. Apparently it's the family's responsibility back here to foot the bill to ship him home for proper cremation. That's why she experienced the sudden need for my cash.

 At the exact same time as this conversation was taking place, I was working with a lovely young student whose family has been paying me to tutor her in preparation for prep school in the States. She's a bright and bubbly eighth-grader, currently being homeschooled for the rest of this academic year. She's been accepted by a number of top-end prep schools, including one in the Chicago-area oligoburb Lake Forest.

 Yesterday, she showed me with great delight the pink, shoulder-less dress her mother bought her for some imagined high school ball, a topic to which she makes an animated return almost every day in class. "Who will invite me? What if I'm not pretty enough to be invited? Will there be dance lessons before the ball? I don't know how to dance." It's as though, freed from the dreaded Chinese gaokao exam, she's now replaced it in her mind with the exalted prom.

 As I learned today, she's already been to America for a two-week summer camp at — of all places — Citrus College, where my ex-girlfriend used to work. In the mornings she attended classes at the Junior College; in the afternoons, she was shuttled to places like Disneyland and Malibu Beach. At night, she stayed with a local family. Her aunt lives with a green card in California somewhere, married to a Chinese guy she met at a fancy party in the States. They have a very cute young son.

 Here you have the two Americas, in stark contrast, presented to my eyes in a single day. One is built of illegal immigration, low-wage jobs, and senseless deadly crimes. In the other, green cards come up in the spring like daffodils, "It's a Small World, After All," and the biggest cause for stress is whether or not a handsome Lake Forestran prince will ask the exuberant Chinese princess to the formal ball.

 We hear much about the two Chinas, the one occupied by the astronomically rich and the other occupied by everybody else, but we don't hear very much about the two very different Americas seen by these two classes of Chinese.