Last Wednesday was the second of my two recent appearances at the local TV station to be one of the guests in a “light-hearted” chat show. For both topics, the person in charge thought it would be interesting to hear the “foreign” point of view, so I got invited along.
The topic of the first programme was something I became aware of a good year and a half after coming to Xian. It’s 'ernai', literally meaning ‘second grandmother’ but actually meaning private prostitute. I suppose the ancient term is concubine.
An ernai (sometimes called xiao san, or small three) is a girl, usually a university student, who, in return for large amounts of money, plus a car, a flat, etc, agrees to be the private prostitute for a rich man, usually a businessman or government official. It’s called ‘to be wrapped up’ (bao), which means that in return for having her material needs fully taken care of, she agrees to be on call whenever he needs someone to make him ‘comfortable’, to sit with him when he’s drinking baijiu with his friends, go on holiday with him, and to not do anything of that nature with anyone else.
After hearing about it the first time, I was pretty surprised. Afterwards, every single time I asked someone about it, they looked at me like I just asked them “Have you ever heard of chopsticks?”. It’s now such a common thing, no one pays attention to it anymore. One girl friend of mine who was a student at the Xian Film University and is in the know about things like this said about 10-15 percent of girls in her year were ernai, while another 30-40 percent worked as “masseurs”, “waitresses” in KTV bars, or prostitutes in high-class hotels.
If you ever see a red car, particularly a red Mazda, in China, it’s probably being driven by an ernai (or the “dakuan”, rich man, who is her ‘employer’). Beijing Foreign Languages University is the most famous in China for its legions of ernai. It’s the same at the universities here with the prettier students, ie, the music university, the arts university and the foreign languages university. Every Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, there’ll be piles of expensive German cars, usually black, waiting outside the main gate. A small procession of girls come tottering out on high heels and park themselves in the front seat before driving off. One of my colleagues at work tried to deny this happens, and everyone rolled their eyes. It’s fairly well accepted that the vast majority of eligible men (rich and powerful) will ‘wrap an ernai’.
This is, of course, not to say that everyone is in on it. Most girls would not do it, especially the conservative types like my colleagues. I often get told I should learn the ‘good things’ about China, not the 'bad stuff’, which is a pretty lame attempt to save face. However, I’m still fairly surprised by how most 'eligible' people would consider it and indeed do it. Most people talk about it like it’s nothing. I've been told that any man who can afford one will have one, while the richer ones will have two or more. I’ve got a friend from the music university who helps rich guys make contact with willing ernai from the ranks of her classmates.
The reasons for it are probably numerous. Most men over forty got married early in a much more austere age than now. With their one child grown up, wife unlikely to divorce him, and the money rolling in, the temptation is not insignificant. As for the girls, it’s a huge amount of very easy money in a highly competitive, over-populated country. A slightly more cynical take on it would be that it shows the pre-eminent position of money and materialism in modern Chinese society.
The topic of the second programme was why married women ‘stretch over the wall like a red apricot’. Or, in modern terms, why do they have affairs. I made the point that a lot of Chinese men, even now, tend to be nice and loyal before getting married, then after getting married and earning more money, they start to ‘wan’, or play around. I also said that sex life is near the bottom of the list for the vast majority of people when it comes to choosing a lifelong partner. Money, in the form of rich parents, stable job, high salary, etc, tend to be at the top of the list. These points were not denied. The other special guest, a 29-year-old psychologist, had just got divorced three days previously after discovering her husband had four different girlfriends during their four years of marriage, and never once came home before 2am.
In modern China, there seem to be ancient ways of thinking, communist (1949-1976) ways of thinking and ‘modern’ ways of thinking all jumbled into one and spread across different generations. Coupled with the unprecedented speed of unsustainable economic development, it’s hard to get to grips with it, particularly for the only children. As they say, ‘the forest is big, it contains every type of bird’.
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
Christmas, New Year and other bits and pieces...
Christmas passed without much happening. Despite the enormous popularity of Christmas among the younger generations, it's far from a public holiday so everyone went to work as normal. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, though, it seemed all of Xian came out to wander round the streets. The centre of town was blocked off to cars (although not my electric scooter) from four in the afternoon. By 7 o'clock, the streets that are normally choc-a-bloc with cars were even more choc-a-bloc with what can only be described as hordes of people. Hawkers were also out in force, selling Halloween face masks, Santa hats and a general array of absolute pap.
I did receive one Christmas card. I have a friend who works in the provincial trade department, and she said (the day before Christmas) that she would send me a card. So it was to my sheer delight, a week after Christmas, that I received yuletide greetings from both the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Shaanxi Sub-Council and the China Chamber of International Commerce Shaanxi Chamber of Commerce. The spirit of Christmas lives on after all.
For New Year, national law requires companies over a certain size to give a small gift to their employees. Normally it's in the form of vouchers. But this year the boss' wife, who is in charge of the money, had a brainwave whereby she could save a few kuai. And so it was that each of us was given an enormous box of bananas and a slightly smaller box of tangerines. I estimated the bananas to number approximately 80-100. Despite being partial to the occasional banana, I felt slightly overwhelmed by the volume and smell of boxes upon boxes of bananas being stacked up in our small office. We were faced with the problem of transporting this lifetime supply of diarrhea-inducing fruit back home. My electric scooter is pretty good, but it was not designed to transport cargo. So I took about 30 of them out, and left the rest to someone else. I think he sold them over the weekend.
The day before New Year, the news headlines popped up on my QQ (the ubiquitous instant messaging service) with a report about 'Thief Village', a place in the countryside near Xian famous all over China for being an outlet of stolen clothes and accessories. I decided to go there on New Year's Day, one of my rare days off.
After about a 50p, one-hour bus ride from the southern bus station, I got off the bus on the main road running through the countryside, with few other people about. I headed towards a nondescript looking village. Not sure if I was in the right place, I was about to ask someone when they stopped me mid-sentence: "You saw the report on QQ then?"
The entire place is completely illegal, but even the huge introduction sign erected by the village council states 'clothing retail industry' among the selling points of Meng Family Village. Near the entrance is a block of small, single-storey shops, all with a bed sheet covering the doorway. Most of them sell the same things - shoes, clothing, belt, watches, and so on. From my research, it's mostly fake stuff but with some genuine items mixed in. I heard that if you make yourself friendly with the shop-owner, they'll bring out the best stuff from the back for you to inspect personally.
I don't think they get a lot of foreigners there, and I was greeted with plenty of 'hah-lows'. They don't like it when you say you're just browsing, so I said I was checking the place out for some rich foreign friends who were hoping to visit the next day. One shop, unassuming from the outside, had wooden floors and dark wood closets, with a very strong smell of leather. It could easily have been the real deal. Inside, rough but well dressed women with dyed hair were arguing with customers about the genuine-ness of the clothing. There's no fixed prices, so the final price depends on the bargaining skills of the two parties. I left with no damage to my wallet, but a good idea of where to do my gift shopping next time.
On the other side of the main road by the bus stop was a single-track road heading through the countryside with a sign for a mountain scenic spot. Having not much else to do, I decided to take a look.
Having not been to the countryside much, it's always good to have a wander round. I was struck by how empty and quiet the villages were. Urbanisation is taking in people and leaving behind old people to look after the kids. It seemed the kids, though, playing outside on the streets and in the fields, were better off than urban contemporaries stuck in front of their computers with no fresh air. I wa as also struck by the relative wealth. One battered old house with a missing door had brand new washing machine humming away in the courtyard, and many of the houses had big red doors and white tiles on the front, a sign of wealth.
After paying the five kuai entrance fee (50p) and avoiding the enormous dogs belonging to the old women in charge, I wandered up the mountain, Erlang Mountain. It's effectively in the middle of nowhere and not well known at all. I had the entire place to myself for most of it. There were lots of birds and pheasants flitting around among the trees, and the overall peacefulness brought home just how much noise there is in the city. A waterfall was completely frozen over, and I watched some university lecturers attempting in vain to climb round and over the side of it. One woman, like many others, chose to wear high heels for her Sunday afternoon mountain climb, which always interests me.
On the top section was the occasional mud brick house, and any reasonably flat part was given over to crops. I met up with a nice couple and wandered round with them for a bit. Later on they gave me a lift back to the bus stop. It's easy to see why so many people are enjoying high standards of living in China. Their small hatchback cost only 60,000RMB (about 6,300GBP), much cheaper than before. And with their only one child being looked after by the grandparents, they are free to go out and climb mountains and give random foreigners lifts.
I did receive one Christmas card. I have a friend who works in the provincial trade department, and she said (the day before Christmas) that she would send me a card. So it was to my sheer delight, a week after Christmas, that I received yuletide greetings from both the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Shaanxi Sub-Council and the China Chamber of International Commerce Shaanxi Chamber of Commerce. The spirit of Christmas lives on after all.
For New Year, national law requires companies over a certain size to give a small gift to their employees. Normally it's in the form of vouchers. But this year the boss' wife, who is in charge of the money, had a brainwave whereby she could save a few kuai. And so it was that each of us was given an enormous box of bananas and a slightly smaller box of tangerines. I estimated the bananas to number approximately 80-100. Despite being partial to the occasional banana, I felt slightly overwhelmed by the volume and smell of boxes upon boxes of bananas being stacked up in our small office. We were faced with the problem of transporting this lifetime supply of diarrhea-inducing fruit back home. My electric scooter is pretty good, but it was not designed to transport cargo. So I took about 30 of them out, and left the rest to someone else. I think he sold them over the weekend.
The day before New Year, the news headlines popped up on my QQ (the ubiquitous instant messaging service) with a report about 'Thief Village', a place in the countryside near Xian famous all over China for being an outlet of stolen clothes and accessories. I decided to go there on New Year's Day, one of my rare days off.
After about a 50p, one-hour bus ride from the southern bus station, I got off the bus on the main road running through the countryside, with few other people about. I headed towards a nondescript looking village. Not sure if I was in the right place, I was about to ask someone when they stopped me mid-sentence: "You saw the report on QQ then?"
The entire place is completely illegal, but even the huge introduction sign erected by the village council states 'clothing retail industry' among the selling points of Meng Family Village. Near the entrance is a block of small, single-storey shops, all with a bed sheet covering the doorway. Most of them sell the same things - shoes, clothing, belt, watches, and so on. From my research, it's mostly fake stuff but with some genuine items mixed in. I heard that if you make yourself friendly with the shop-owner, they'll bring out the best stuff from the back for you to inspect personally.
I don't think they get a lot of foreigners there, and I was greeted with plenty of 'hah-lows'. They don't like it when you say you're just browsing, so I said I was checking the place out for some rich foreign friends who were hoping to visit the next day. One shop, unassuming from the outside, had wooden floors and dark wood closets, with a very strong smell of leather. It could easily have been the real deal. Inside, rough but well dressed women with dyed hair were arguing with customers about the genuine-ness of the clothing. There's no fixed prices, so the final price depends on the bargaining skills of the two parties. I left with no damage to my wallet, but a good idea of where to do my gift shopping next time.
On the other side of the main road by the bus stop was a single-track road heading through the countryside with a sign for a mountain scenic spot. Having not much else to do, I decided to take a look.
Having not been to the countryside much, it's always good to have a wander round. I was struck by how empty and quiet the villages were. Urbanisation is taking in people and leaving behind old people to look after the kids. It seemed the kids, though, playing outside on the streets and in the fields, were better off than urban contemporaries stuck in front of their computers with no fresh air. I wa as also struck by the relative wealth. One battered old house with a missing door had brand new washing machine humming away in the courtyard, and many of the houses had big red doors and white tiles on the front, a sign of wealth.
After paying the five kuai entrance fee (50p) and avoiding the enormous dogs belonging to the old women in charge, I wandered up the mountain, Erlang Mountain. It's effectively in the middle of nowhere and not well known at all. I had the entire place to myself for most of it. There were lots of birds and pheasants flitting around among the trees, and the overall peacefulness brought home just how much noise there is in the city. A waterfall was completely frozen over, and I watched some university lecturers attempting in vain to climb round and over the side of it. One woman, like many others, chose to wear high heels for her Sunday afternoon mountain climb, which always interests me.
On the top section was the occasional mud brick house, and any reasonably flat part was given over to crops. I met up with a nice couple and wandered round with them for a bit. Later on they gave me a lift back to the bus stop. It's easy to see why so many people are enjoying high standards of living in China. Their small hatchback cost only 60,000RMB (about 6,300GBP), much cheaper than before. And with their only one child being looked after by the grandparents, they are free to go out and climb mountains and give random foreigners lifts.
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