............................................................................Hi. It's been long months since the last email, and it's been a strained period of cultural adjustment, so even though it's hard to articulate and be upbeat, I'll try. I always end up writing many pages, perhaps many chapters' worth, and reduce it to what you see here: sometimes it's boring observations, sometimes it's whimsical… well, actually these past months it's all outraged ranting and self-pity as I acclimate to southern China, so I bury that in a deep folder where no one can see :-) Anyway, hopefully the photos will say more. http:// share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AYtmzFm3cuGJd http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AYtmzFm3cuGJuhttp://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AYtmzFm3cuGJ_ I'm in Guangdong, best described as a massive industrial pit, an endless factory zone, the most affluent province of China. Nowadays, entire SimCity metropolises are pre-planned and rapidly built up within two to three years, then people flood in for money and taxbreaks. This is where multinational like Walmart, 3M, Cisco, Panasonic—you name it—get all their goods manufactured in volumes of hundred millions, and where the country bids all of its hopes for the superpower future. In our prefecture of DongGuan, the infamous structure here is the South China Mall , the largest shopping center on the planet. It is Asian superlative at its peak; unambiguously extravagant, a billion-dollar project, with IMAX theatre, video game arcades, and Bellagio fountains. Like a mile-long moat with drawbridges, a Venetian canal takes gondolas all throughout the architectural themes of the mall (each replicated on Italy, California, Egypt, the Caribbean Islands, Greece, etc. complete with landmarks) and finally, enters a dark grotto and finishes at the log ride and thriller amusement park. Inside one building is an air-pumped vinyl playground several hundred meters long, with a space ship, a number of twisty slides, a pumped-up maze and a three-story inflated pyramid replica, where kids can repel off the side with ropes. And its plaza is a lagoon and a pirate's ship, where kids are inserted into a large transparent sphere, floating and tumbling like a hamster on the water's surface, (until oxygen runs out?) and I always get this Alice-in-Wonderland feeling because this place is still devoid of pedestrians. .............................................................................More than any other part of China, Guangdong has a vicious reputation for greed and competitiveness. It is known for its theives, cheats and prostitution. In a world of unbridled capitalism, it's a place where laws yield to the bottom line... and the slogan might as well be: " to hell with principles, show me the money." Guangdong's burgeoning population is mainly migrant factory workers or service personnel, who work day- and nightshifts to maintain 24-hour output six days a week and every blue-collar does twelve hour days overtime. (Some have fainted due to exhaustion.) Although poor by our standards, most workers live decently, at the adjoining compounds at the factory premise where they eat, sleep, and play, so that even though there's 45 million people around here, there's rarely bumper-to-bumper traffic jams. The communal dorms have seven stories and gender segregated; each floor corresponds to rank. At the bottom is a cafeteria, a TV room, and a store. On the job, almost all of the cheap assembly ( a.k.a. crapwork) go to women, and almost all of the desk positions belong to men, with the exception of secretaries and marketing positions. Virtually everyone sends money home to their peasant parents, (3000 kuai a year --$387 USD--which is the amount both farming parents make in the entire year,) and they travel home only twice a year. For some reason, I relate with the factory workers the most, even though being around them makes me feel guilty and sad sometimes. To them, I'm weird: forgoing the company sedan to walk, trading fancy vacations for poorer dissolute ghettos, and eating in the mess halls when I've got generous meal reimbursements. But I love learning from them! I love to live how they do! How they raise babies, and they view relationships: it's totally different. And it's eye-opening for me to learn "their Chinese culture," because the one I've grown accustomed to is absent. All the years of traditional etiquette, the reciprocation process, the superstitious and historical references... at first, I cringed when they flip the fish over and ate so sloppily. Unfortunately, because our social status yawns such a wide gulf, it's nearly impossible to form real meaningful friendships. ............................................................................Anyway, stupid Lonely Planet. They always paint a rosy picture even when the undertone culture is oppressive. First of all, people are hardcore into conspicuous consumption to demonstrate material success and I'm-better-than-you-ness. And by far the worst thing for me to endure is how pervasive the patriarchal society is. To be a woman is to count for nothing. Here in the southeast quadrant, girls here who don't fit the feminine prototype are force-hammered into it. Meanwhile, men make all the decisions and possess the assets, and will throw trash on the floor for women to pick it up (imagine the trouble I caused when I threw trash in front of them and told them to pick it up themselves) where haughty attitudes and chauvinism run rampant, and where factories only hire attractive girls aged 23-27 for menial positions that demand hard work, and it's tacitly understood that they aren't supposed to advance. (BTW machine work is dangerous. During my time here, there has been a number of really horrific accidents; fingers and hands are sliced off, one chemical explosion in which one died and the other was left with burn scars over 90% of her body. Very disgusting: It's bad enough to hear about it, but far worse to be here and slowly alter your mind so you think that this is normal.) Had I not been mistaken repeatedly for a working girl, I might've never known. (My mom advised to bring my nicest brands; I refused—how I'm eating my own words now!) Men often interrupt women, exclude them, berate them, liberally making them feel like morons, abusing the system like tyrants, and reinforcing the idea that girls aren't good enough. Many women are made ashamed of things that aren't their fault, and believe they simply don't have the capacity for math, language, science or management---anything that empowers---and virtue comes from the modesty of accepting their station in life. The penalty for being an ugly girl is to be condemned to low-pay grunt work, no matter how smart they are. Being a worker means having strict rules: You must wear the uniform skirt from May to October, but you must wear jacket and tie in the winter, hair must be combed, tied, undyed. You must live on campus, where they charge food, rent and utilities, and tardiness by a single minute can cost you the whole day's wage. The security is unforgiving, and often, the rules that don't make sense: after you swipe your timecard, everyone must walk counter-clockwise around the entire campus before going to your office and again when you leave, otherwise the violation is three-hour's pay where entire monthly salary is 500-800 RMB for most. (Only Peter and I are exempt from every single one of these, and we have 3000 RMB per month in meal allowance alone. Woo, l-i-b-e-r-t-y!!) In some areas in Guangdong, the men just sit around like despots at home while the women work jobs as well as taking care of children and scrub the floors! Then there's infanticide, whereby males are so much more valuable than females that they trash the baby if it comes out female. Yet, instead of addressing the issue---they all told me to suck it up and "adjust our culture." ............................................................................Frankly I have never paid such a heavy price for being the combination of "Chinese" + "Girl" and it took a huge psychological toll. It would be an understatement to say that there were times when I was losing it. There were so many dreadful days I really missed the home, where being "rich" could be absolutely normal, where I didn't have to be conscious about every privilege I had, and our delusions for individual accomplishment. Those can-do dreams ("I'll meet popstars and work for them!" "I'll attend the best university!") were gradually eroded by China, which convinces you that as a lowly denizen of the billions, you really don't matter and you are replaceable if you don't shut up and work because there are hundreds wanting your job and will labor harder than you, so don't even think you're something special. There are three ways to escape gender oppression: be extraordinarily pretty, be conspicuously wealthy, or have a man of high rank. But because that combination rarely ever happens (honestly, what teenager here gets a sports car for her sixteenth birthday? Or has her own apartment to attend college? Or a salary that rivals the boss'-boss'-boss'-boss? Or having explored seventeen countries in the past three years, and not just standard Europe tour, but across five continents?) and because I looked so ordinary, and Mandarin flowed from my lips---and it's my own fault for socializing with the working class and not being as American as they expected---they thought I was just a compulsive pathological liar. Surely the reason I spoke fluent must-be-level-eight-English and was clueless about soap operas of the last decade was because I was Taiwanese---a bad conclusion if you're on the mainland side. Therefore, my outlandish claim that I was really American was not only met with skepticism, but with hostility because clearly I was a big fat liar who didn't know my humble place enough to make up frivolous fantasy stories and deny my own Chinese heritage. ............................................................................To be Asian is to endure distortionist social pressure, to be expected to perform more for less, to accept that life is about enduring/suffering/anguish until you have money, and under these circumstances, it is no wonder that with an extreme culture that demands high education (" You think the 99th percentile is good? That means a million people are better than you! Maybe two! Are you that stupid?") and material keep-with-the-Jones-itis ("Six figures isn't rich, look at your neighbors; you're just average, ")… it is the competitive Asians who end up disproportionately in America's top tier universities and gated neighborhoods, buying hordes of luxury brands and growing economically at breakneck speed, and also Asians who have a disproportionate amount of stoic silence about psychiatric depression. There's so much anxiety that deliberate suicides occur very often; the side-effect of competing in a 1.3 billion talent pool. (On the Virginia Tech Incident --" Whew...good thing he was Korean, can you imagine if he were Chinese?! How embarassing would that have been. Hahaha suckers, too bad for them...how selfish to kill himself before repaying his parents, investment gone to waste. Welp good thing he killed himself." Cookoos get locked away forever in the loony bin, never to be seen again, like that Hong Kong guy who hacked up twelve kids with a butcher knife. Get the drift?) It's that world where children have been stick-disciplined (and I don't mean a mere hand-slap, but until your skin bleeds) to memorize one of the world's most difficult writing systems, where a perfect SAT 1600 score is no longer a singular achievement: If you're Asian, you ought to be getting that, even if English wasn't your native language. It's so obvious now why my grandma and so many other talented Chinese women left the southern provinces without ever looking back. Luckily, we're in the income bracket that deflects the worst of it, because I don't have to work in low jobs where I get yelled at or beaten. And because of Pete's rank and white complexion and his ability to write and speak Mandarin, (which makes him a total celebrity around here,) I can even tell people to quit bullying. I can re-direct some of the company benefits toward women and even be in a position of authority to seriously change things for the better. But still. On some rainy days I get so moody I could scream, but since everyone expects me to fail miserably and "go home," I take this as a test of my tenacity and mettle and make the best of it. ............................................................................CHINA'S CHOSEN FEWPete works at a desk behind elegant glass doors. All his coworkers (and I) live within our manicured community, where a company car escorts us. Travel, food, cell phone, housekeeping, and utilitarian bills are expensed, and social circuit involves weekends in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Macau and Shenzhen. But these perks don't tip the iceberg of China's bourgeois polarity where the poor works extremely hard, and the nouveau riche play harder. Here, big business is transacted through endless meetings, networking events, hard drinking, karaoke, golf, gambling and late nights of lewd debauchery at bars and clubs. In the highest ranks of business, nobody seriously gets up before noon unless it's a golf game at the Mission Hills Country Club. (By the way, "customer support" here, really means accompanying the client to get roaring drunk, pairing him with a whore, booking them a room, and sealing the deal the next morning.) Thankfully, we're spared of the seedy obligation, but the banquets, womanizing, booze and sleaziness seem business-as-usual in the schmoozing process. I have yet to find decent foreigners too. [Why is it that so many Westerners in China tend to be divorced middle-aged perverts who border on sexual predators? The way they look at me gives me the heebijeebies.] Anyway, this playboy life is insane. First of all, I'm always around men who are overeager to prove their machismo virility, particularly when they're in a group. Whether it's deliberately being sloppier than usual, bitter seething hatred toward Taiwan---(oh yes, somehow the Chinese wholeheartedly believe that nuking Taipei to smithereens will make them better off)---or patting the waiter's butt in a patronizing way. And secondly, if we go shopping, there are hordes of vendors and throngs of shoppers shoving (and by the way, caveat emptor!) If we do the pulsating nightlife, all the trance clubs are packed with prostitutes and the urban elite, splurging on alcohol, girls, and Ecstasy, Crystal Meth, Ketamine---rendering them in sweaty, jittery coma in a blast of kaleidoscopic lasers. LSD is not uncommon. In a nutshell here's my world: Extremely testosterone-driven. Powerful inequalities. And frequent bribes for people to look the other way---cash isn't just king, it's God. As you can imagine, it's nearly impossible to find somebody to really talk to. The Americans/Europeans tend to whine about how everything is different--duh, what did they expect?!--and how the steak and marinara sauce isn't cooked right. Many sinking into moral depravity as they trade local girlfriends by the month while asking idiotic things like: " Are you sure the Great Wall is man-made?" ho-ho-ho. Then there's people who derive sadistic pleasure by making subordinates feel powerless, undignified, and unloved. And those who believe that the oppression on the working class is sad but absolute necessary, so in the name of profitable production they treat their labor like sh*t and develop callous indifference. Nobody cares about the Third World, nor uplifting human values, about seeking beauty in the ordinary, nor dreams up big ideas that keep you excited at night, or has that glimmering reserve of brave heroism that I admire. Altruism is scoffed at and many people deeply question my motives in suspicion. It is much easier to charge obscenely high fees than it is to volunteer, and this gives you another peek into the culture I'm in. I've tried three places to offer free tutorial to low-income elementary schools, and the administrators refused to see me, then insulted me and nearly kicked me out---saying, " How do we know your competence is real? You might be a child molester." And while there were many perfidious charlatans, I tried to convince them that I wasn't there to harass their children, after a frustrated hour explaining my fluency came from being abroad, I spewed: " Well, Peter-Piper-Picked-A-Peck-Of-Pickled-Peppers!!! And Supercali-Fragiclistic-Expialadocious!!!" they dismissed me saying, "听不懂！听不懂你的劈里啪啦劈里啪啦的！" (Can't understand your pili-pala-pili-pala jibberish!) and then retorted that if I were so rich to work for free, I should go to America. ............................................................................By large, ladies in my community are trophy wives of the leisure class, whose income would be lower-middle class in America, whose lives revolve around gossip, saunas, massages and salons, shopping at The Mall, prowling the night life, and getting their kids into cut-throat schools. And since it's considered beneath prestige to clean their own place, take out their own garbage, or walk instead of drive…and because I do those things, (and not only refusing the housekeeping service, but even inviting factory workers into the house! Egad, horrors!) the gossip went around that I must be Pete's live-in mistress / whore. The porter demanded the legitimacy of my being inside the community gates and everybody made daily life pretty annoying. When I first arrived, I thought I couldn't handle any of this, that I must not be in China. The rudeness, the pushiness, the selfishness. There were many depressing weeks as Pete had to explain to every single establishment that I was not a whore. Doors slammed in my face, waitresses "forgot" to serve me tea, someone spat on me, everyone inspected me in public, eavesdropped us at any moment, a lot of people gossiped about me, spread half-truths about me, I was yelled at, cars accelerated to run me off the road or splashed puddles onto my white clothes, and several handshakes were ignored and I had to endure being dragged through mud. (Well technically no. This is only the second time I've been in China without my family's supervision or set-up, and lemme tell you: life is far more convenient if you have secret service following you around in an entouraged tinted sedan and accepting gifts from whatever politician, and I mean legendary hospitality, like flying around the country to see impressive collections of national treasures and pandas. China seemed soo much cooler back then. It was a childhood of delighting bureaucrats and businessmen, reciting poetry for a jade jewelry or solving a miyu riddle for 700-year-old pottery. " Now kiss him! Now sing for us! Do you like stamps? Here is an autographed set from the mint press of Beijing! Here's a seal of my city, just for you! Does our little princess want to see my big steel mill? Bet you do!" I've always enjoyed exploring factories and warehouses, and I remember those banquets when I forbade men from smoking or drinking--- "Secondhand smoke kills, and drinking is bad! "---and when the mayor put down his cigar and dumped his cognac, everyone else had to, too. If you've ever wondered how Chinese-American girls in LA become experts at being cute, it's from modifying our behavior so that of beyond the heaps of worthless symbolic stuff and ancient artifacts, we got what we really wanted: Lisa Frank stickers. So upon hearing about my demise, my dad and uncle advised me write down all the offenders' names and to call "their friend" here who'd immediately "take care of it" but… that ain't my style. I hate using someone else's reputation for my own personal problems. Besides, if anything, what this place needs is more love.) Anyway this is the part I'll to glaze over, partly because I want to forget it and partly because I don't want to discount the good days. So in those first months I cocooned myself in my self-pity, lost and angry, focusing on my own work and consoling myself alone with online friends. And there were times when I just snapped, like that rainy day when yet another car deliberately tried to run me off the road, thinking it'd be a funny mean thing to do (norms dictated that frightened mud-soiled pedestrians would just scurry out of the way,) but with my American knee-jerk reaction, I swiftly picked up a brick chunk and pitched it *THUD* at her Nissan...instinctively picking up another brick should the driver wanted to start something...realizing only too late...with the crowd gasped in suspension, that my outraged reaction was out of character for a Chinese-proletariat-girl--especially towards the driving class-- and I was probably seen as a dangerous psychopath on the loose! The driver sped away quickly, and I hurried home mortified. Week two…week four… week six… the effects compounded, and all this isolation began to make me depressed and sick. Being cooped up and by myself, at first I felt isolated and an emotional mess, then vegetated like a bored lunatic in an upscale-but-nonetheless-insane asylum. Finally, came those days of incessant nausea and vomiting, because I don't stay indoors very well. It's an ego-sabotaging experience being demoted to the public status of a whore, and I was Little Miss Resentment for a while. (Tellingly, the demeaning vanished once they found out that I was foreign and, I guess more pointedly, "rich"…and then came the sycophants. Ugh! I don't even know how to put this words, it's like, now that we have something, I don't really like the people that end up in our social circle.) ............................................................................Because of that trial by fire and the indignation, (and honestly more because of a wounded ego,) the moment came that I was hell-bent on bucking the trend and proving everyone wrong. I swore I'd make an impact teaching people about better things, and that I'd be valued precisely for being a Chinese girl. It was a visceral anger, but I was tired of my worth being constantly measured by what a-white-guy-would've-made (therefore mine should be less.) For that reason, when I finally decided to teach night courses, I carefully used my referrals and I rained bullets of solid arguments why I ought to be super-compensated. Any insecurities for being underqualified was now replaced with: "I must do this for all Chinese women." Fast-forward a couple of weeks, I'm pretty sure nobody else had the balls to command $80-$100 per hour---in China it's two-months' salary. But once I learnt that money, and not moral character or merit, was what was going to stop people stepping all over me, I didn't mind using extortionist negotiation tactics honed by all those black market haggling tricks. (Note that making $100 per hour to teach alphabet soup is a freakish outlier; a rare case in which overestimating myself actually worked. And it was a lot easier than volunteering.) One thing I did not expect from charging so high, was not only did that salary summon immediate deference and respect (this is stupidly illogical: somehow lots of money = intelligence, aptitude, guru omniscience) but also the companies so treasured every hour they painfully paid, that they made the unprecedented move to bound their employees to attend my class, and forced in all the executives by two-year legal contract. I became the proverbial MBA program, videotaped, reviewed and tested. Many students were twice my age and though they refused to acknowledge me before, now they listen closely. [Moral of the story: charge absurdly high fees first, then watch the them rationalize it by convincing themselves you're that good.] With the spotlight on, I deliberately biased discussions toward encouraging empathy, mentorship, treating women better and social responsibility, all under the guise of "teaching English." (Hey, I taught it in English, right?!) It really hurt learning about what they really thought of women's roles--they confessed they really thought I was a prostitute--but using that I worked zealously to prove myself, to demonstrate that women were competent, and set to be a living example. This English class--which was the center and bane of my existence--became hard because I wanted to influence company-wide changes. I took privilege to lecture about inductive capacitance, how a computer works, how spectroscopy works in the analysis of urinary sediment, how engines run, and how to fix cars (which blew them away; vice presidency of a college automotive club came in super handy!) It seems incongruous with my girly impishness but I think that's what it took for them to finally consider female engineer applicants instead of trashing the resumes in the round file, and hiring ONE female engineer. ............................................................................It sounds easy in writing, but where chauvinism and discrimination is deeply entrenched and fortified by business, getting them to accept and recruit that first female engineer at equal pay was a frikkin' monumental effort! Frustrating too. Everyone believes science and leadership are male domain, and so they hire girls they'd like to date into harmless meaningless grunt-work jobs. It doesn't help that a screening protocol requires an affixed photograph to the résumé. So even though this girl had an engineer's CV, they unanimously voted to stick the applicant in the marketing department (logic: "because girls need sociability.") While what I experienced was more harsh and overt, I'm sure worldwide many people judge women by the beauty they're born with and men by the performance they've achieved. It took five concerted weeks of persuasive seminars, dozens of private one-on-one conversations, and personally emailing the applicant, and befriending the CFO's eldest son (which not many people could do but he's a Berkeley student and we're kinda on the same level) and even building a convincing case of diversity's low risk and sure-fire profitability to get this done. It drained me, it deflated me, it discouraged me, but as the American-born daughter of an industrialist, I think I'm in a unique position to do it, since most Daddy's-Little-Girls of the Overseas Chinese wind up as socialites and these annoying issues become Not-Their-Problem. It felt like such a thankless job, and I'll bet she'll never even know. All she got was a crisp offer letter, junior design engineer, and a dream stint to go to America next year. A cloaked compliment from Pete sums it up: "Hey Vicky, how come every time you have a period, the entire company's policies have to change? " Come to think of it… odd how the last four menstruation cycles coincided in 1) the installment of a mandatory respect training that forces all employees to appreciate women, 2) a more lenient reimbursement system with petty cash 3) the recruitment of the first female engineer at equal pay, and 4) another salary hike. sigh... What can I say?"Because, Peter. When that very sensitive time of the month comes…Me Godzilla! Mean boys = Lunch. Godzilla bleeds… ANGRY!!! Crush!-Stomp!-Smash! D.E.S.T.R.O.Y."............................................................................THE EX-PAT CLICHÉ In private, my life degenerated into that ex-pat cliché that you'd love to hate. This is backpackers' sacrilege, a true adventurer's worst nightmare, and I'm debating whether I should reveal it. It began with the exclusive gated community, the private escorted cars, and every meal in upscale restaurants, the electric nightlife, and then taking out-of-town excursions every other weekend with that devil-may-care spending---because the company pays anyway. Soon, every conversation included investment portfolios, massages, sports cars, real estate, or the perennially favorite topic: Money. Being around these shallow people, I almost forgot how to savor the genuine happiness and immense satisfaction of a fearless life trail-blazed on my own terms, and some days to revive my madness, I grab my jacket and aviator sunglasses, and motorcycle into the farthest city beyond the horizon. Alas, instead of that wild freedom I craved, after the reputation I incurred during for seminars, I became a sought-after multilingual interpreter, apparently because in addition to my manufacturing roots, the combo of Mandarin-English-Portuguese-Spanish is quite rare (thanks to all the poor countries in which I've spent time volunteering)…and China seeks to do business not only with the U.S., but with Africa and Latin America.So...not too long ago, the CEO of another company picked me to be his personal translator and I discovered: Oral interpreting is hard. First of all, it isn't about foreign tongues, but intimately knowing the language of a specific circle and then culturally translating in a way so the transaction isn't botched up. It means having to memorize a dictionary of jargon that I didn't know, and then painstakingly learning it in the languages for a bunch of decision-makers. It means having to learn how the company operated from head to toe, going around from foreman to foreman with a notebook, so that I could explain it well to foreigners. And then there's the cheng-yu idioms that the Chinese love to quote, but take forever to convey, if I understand them at all. Even though this should be my territory because I grew up around my dad's factories, I feel stupid. But...do you want to know what my job really is? To be the CEO's female interpreter, it turns out, is to be an American geisha, with 60% of my worth pegged to my looks, 30% to my brands, and only 10% to what I've spent a lifetime earning or working hard trying to accomplish. I speak when I am spoken to, without voice of my own. It is to go to conventions, clients, and conference rooms. Beside him, my entire value is determined in the first few exchanges: "Wow, what a beautiful interpreter you have---look at her slender figure!" "Yes, she's Californian, even went to MIT." "Wow, how did you ever get her?" at which point I press my lips and twirl the long wispy hair, and thus securing the prominent stature of whichever male I'm interpreting for. My self-effacing remarks turn any compliment into a complaint about my appearance: no, no, the brownish hair is because of the chemicals in our swimming pools, it looks very limp and too straight. I am the male's Louis Vuitton status symbol, reduced to being his fashion accessory and his la Malinche translator at the same time. I engage and I disengage, gaze or stare intently, maintain fluidity. And sometimes for my own amusement, I adapt a slightly British accent to adequately translate his arrogant snobbery, and secretly, I pretend that I'm the boss of the empire because I must interpret in first-person-I. For the first time in my life, I look good to make someone else look good. I have to do my hair at the salon for someone else's reputation. I have to bleach-whiten my teeth for someone else's honor. Maintain a healthy complexion for someone else's name. Stroll at night so as NOT to tan my skin, because now, the strawberry lip gloss and fragrance is sadly worth far more than all those years of biochemistry and calculus classes combined. They don't care---and here's the rub: a Chinese girl's venerable education is meant to bolster the man's reputation! My "value," I'm ashamed to even write this, is to be that 5'8" elegant foreign-born whose heels click assuredly next to the CEO's so that all males turn to stare at me, then him, and admire him. Most businesses reinforce discrimination, seize stereotypes and racism, under the mask of competitiveness and supply-and-demand (Read: "Get American Wage" attachment.) So I'm not naive: what pays is not for me to be who I really am, but who they think I am: a china puppet. If they ask what music I like, it's better not to disappoint them with Shakira, Mana, Missy Elliot or Justin Timberlake...no, no, they want to know my Chinese name, and Chinese music I like, and the Chinese traditional customs I perform, which matches the Asian feminine role I play. The more exotic the better! So disempowering. I'm reduced to human advertisement! Particularly the Midwestern businessmen: they seem to ignore the fact that I'm speaking fluently to them about electronics and enunciate s-l-o-w-l-y, saying "In America, we blablabla..." Inside my mind, I figure that if womanly arts must be manipulated, it should be for good social causes: This is the way I'll gain position/influence to change stifling policies for the company's toiling women and as long as I'm not compromising myself, this job could be the lamest well-paid job ever, as I learn everything about manufacturing and deal-making. Because inside, I am still the idealistic, untamed jungle-girl who has temporarily donned the ladylike accoutrements and behavior of a professional… before I escape to the outback of Madagascar on the back of truck! Let my hair whip and blow in tangled knots! Let my sneakers smack of mud! Let me climb over walls and hop over the roof! FREEDOM!!! ............................................................................Apparently my highest going rate is like Y75,000 a week ($10,000---a bounty price for a businessman I don't respect, but usually it's less) which is ludicrous in China but that's what the connections and cultural translation and nondisclosure is worth, I suppose. And since my costs are zero, the mercenary fees are whatever number I say it is, and it's expensive because people will value what they pay for. And due to how mean people were to me, I have a penalty price reserved for jerks, racists, chauvinists, idiots and creepy people, and whenever they suggest that it ought to be cheaper because I'm Chinese labor, or because I'm a girl, I raise the price by a thousand. But comfort comes with it's own responsibilities and problems. You could say I slammed into the "what's-the-meaning-of-money?" soul search. It was a period of massive demotivation. There was nothing that could make me want to try harder to push myself. What could I buy---another designer bag? Another flight? Another twenty CDs? Every material need was satisfied, but my soul was deader than ever. After years of struggling ambition, I just wasn't ready for life to be so easy. And so torn and guilty in my bubble. Money could buy a lot of things, and it can buy escape, but it can't buy what I wanted most: an entire culture of change, where abuse wasn't so commonplace that people grow psychologically dependent on it, where people could avoid trading their lives and endangering their safety for $62 a month (I still can't believe I make that in less than an hour of speaking platitudes,) where hard work and intelligence could weigh more than genetic luck…or sunny clear skies and starry nights in polluted monsoon weather for that matter. ............................................................................Miraculously, I found one invaluable mentor/friend in Shenzhen, a fellow ABC ( American-born-Chinese.) Rather, she found me, which is more incredible since my city isn't even on the map. She was closing a deal for Sun Microsystems and met with Pete at the office, and upon hearing about me, she persistently phoned me for a sleepover; Pete not invited. When I relented to this crazed stranger, she sent her driver for me immediately that morning, driving over two hours, and when I first saw her at the door, she rattled our first words in Spanish, " Ay chica, que tienes fotos de chapínes---you have pictures of Guatemalans---I like you already. Ya listo?" Over four days I studied her like she studied me, little details like my Zapata keychain, or her tablecloth dyed in Yunnan, my African wood carvings, our pashmina wraps from Nepal. Knowing meant going, and people who shuck it in developing countries with fleas have a common bond that few other people understand. She had gone to many places I haven't been, but I had my fair share too. That first night we stayed up til 5AM laughing?/crying?/complaining? about the horrid war stories and injustices that had happened to us in poor countries, (those times when you think, " You miserable wretches deserve your own miserable poverty!!! What's wrong with you people? Don't you idiots ever do what is good for yourselves?" …bless my forgetfulness and my tendency to laugh at myself and putting a positive spin on my experiences which keeps me going back) and that made me a sudden best friend to her. As a traveler who had wandered for five consecutive years---even Iran!---Su related to how defeating it felt to suddenly settle into a routine, how bad it sucked to be perceived as the prostitute (or in her case, the housekeeper.) She, too, had a spirit for adventure and took me to the salsa club in Shenzhen. She introduced me to a bunch of her Berkeley and expat friends. And since several overseas Chinese here had substantial parental connections, her uncle owned a watch factory--we discussed building factories with better conditions for women and families, and strengthening relations between China and Latin America. We bounced a lot of exciting ideas between each other, I told her about plastic injection molding and she told me about precision machining and tooling as we got pummeled in massages. (Yes, what did you think we womenfolk gossiped about behind closed doors?) So feeling like a philanthropist duo with her five-bedroom penthouse in the lavish Futian district, she invited migrant factory women to pajama parties (they marveled how one single person could have TWO marbly bathrooms, a marvelous view, and so many bedrooms all to herself, vacant beds and laundered sheets, set up like the Marco Polo) she sponsored the entire tuition for the children of migrant workers, and she paid for entire orphanages in Central America, which she visited three times a year. I guess the one redeeming thing about the poor becoming poorer is that it becomes increasingly easier for us to pay the difference. I was so inspired that I also dedicated 100% of my earnings here into an untouchable stockpile to "buy" some local doctors or skilled teachers for very poor villages, so that they'd retain free service for a year. Imagine: if one hour for me was two month's wage elsewhere: I could even double their normal salary in order to keep the talent in a rural region. You know that African proverb that says it takes a whole village to raise one kid? Well we joked about being that kid that raised a whole African village!! (Except, it really wasn't joking as we set up the accounts to do it.) [By the way, a sidenote: One thing about involving yourself with the poor, particularly if you're the yuppie rich, and I mean "rich" by the lowest standard possible--is that it's like wanting to domesticate an exotic monkey for a pet. It's a quaint concept, and all Americans want to do it, to bring in an orphaned creature to take care of it and protect it from the cruel world outside, but the fact is most people get bitten! So it is with poverty. Right now that as we find ways to reduce the pains of destitution by inviting people to our homes, by living alongside the poor to empathize often means exposing ourselves to the risk of hostility and sicknesses, to the dissolute and beggars and burglars, not the least of which being that sometimes the poor resent/envy/aspire for what you have (mostly without having the discipline or mindset to merit it) and want to take much more than you can give; you're the philanthropist constantly outsmarting them in order to give sufficiently without being mauled. It is much easier to donate, let NGOs and middlemen handle it, because being the rich among the poor is like scuba diving for treasures where the sharks lurk....Another squeamish issue toward befriending the very poor is the embarassing discomfort of their discomfort of our wealth: that my home has appliances or a staircase or a chandelier is so unfathomable to them that conversation cannot proceed normally. They are so accustomed to being marginalized that if I'm in a position of authority and also kind, they think something is wrong! So while I am trying to get to know them better, in their mind they've created a huge distance: "she's so rich...she's so rich..."...I do not know what it's like to be extremely impoverished, but I think it is to live in fear and remain stuck at their level. They think that just because I could afford better, that I can't eat with them in their mess halls, as if their food is inedible and not fit for my consumption. Then, everything is an invisible violation: they don't dare go through that door, or that building, or that floor. A lot of " I don't know what it's like in there, because one cannot go in unless you are level 6 and above." So to try to befriend them is a tense uncomfortable experience where I have to say, " Come find out with me, they will not kick you out if you are with me," and, "Don't walk as if you are ashamed, you are now a guest of the restaurant here, hold your head up in this hotel, " or "Really, it's okay to use the elevator." It's pretty stressful to be their first everything: first time ordering gourmet, first time using a sit-down toilet, first time seeing a cityview from a skyscraper. But I am not born with the talent of knowing what to do, or how to be friends, with people who behave so precautiously, so undeservingly of little kind gestures.] ............................................................................It's a lonely messy experience being in a developing country when you're obviously well-off. No matter how much you try to blend in and erase differences, your mindset and habits are just radically different. We're more frugal. Poor people use money strangely, and it's really painful to see it live in action. In every Third World / developing country I've been to, it never ceases to amaze me how everyone blows THREE FULL MONTHS OF THEIR PERSONAL INCOME on the latest cell phone at retail price---omg they don't bargain and they're the ones who really should!!! Even as a status symbol, the price plummets quickly! It's crazy: like they impoverish themselves creating the illusion of wealth, while we are the stingy cheap ones whose bank account prospers. I've explained how they could spend money more effectively, but these poor act as if today's trendiest Nokia/Motorola is a prestige neccesity over housing or education, which makes me scared to donate anything but my time and services! Sometimes the vast majority are so short-term-minded, so instant gratification, prone to bad decisions, that I feel the best thing to do for poverty is to earn myself and sponsor that which is better for their wellbeing. And it sucks to be whispered about as "the rich one." You lose the right to be a regular human being. How do you explain to a local who asks for a personal loan, that all our spectacular lifestyle is actually company reimbursed money (the "use it or lose it" kind) that you're saving your own income for a greater impact cause that helps many more people in a faraway place, and most of your personal stash (the "use it and lose it" kind) is locked up in investments anyway? My own out-of-pocket expenses are usually really mundane things like toilet paper, the other expensive things are all borrowed, traded, given as gifts, heavily discounted, or mostly company-expensed because, duh, businesses have tax incentives. By far, my unwise spending mistakes are possible because I can afford mistakes--they can't. Even then, my cell phone isn't the flashiest model, and it's bargained down 25% even when they told me it's not possible to haggle with Nokia. So as you see, without meaning to, the only new friends I ended up attracting in all of China are the California-born sons and daughters of industrialists, and they're not even in my city. ............................................................................Which is why me being the mid-twenties girl catapulted so rapidly in the public eye from Pete's prostitute to being the darling princess of the factories who, having gained political status of being the CEO's personal interpreter, now bends policies for better conditions, I think I've magically inspired awe from the women, only to gain the resentment from some of the men. (Who does this girl think she is anyway?) I really hate it when there's seemingly win-win solutions, people retort "you think too much" and give me that "I'm just putting up with you" look. While I've never been much of a feminista, it's that cursed empathy for the underdogs--which here, are the women--which left me no moral choice but to take this job and make it my personal crusade as long as I'm here. (My dad will say I've always been this way: when I was really young we went to the Philippines and I felt so terrible for all the begging children in Manila that I always asked to forfeit my lunch to box it up for them.) And so it will be sad news---and relief to many others--that I'll be leaving in a few months, back to California where I could be just normal again, happily unaffected, where difficulties such as these could be easily Somebody-Else's-Problem again. I don't think it's disillusionment or giving up: I caused change, and it is not hopeless. But it is unrewarding and certainly not fun at all. If the rules dictate that obscene paychecks be the modicum of respect, then so be it---we can play that game. But between Su and me, whose personal expenditures rarely exceed $10,000 a year---especially in developing countries---our last-laugh joke on the world is to donate the excess to our causes while we are in China. (I figure that even if I donate it all, my experience allows me to earn it all again later...these countries have a way of teaching lucrative transferable skills, like negotiation.) But for certain battles, certain impact, the emotional aftermath are far more exhausting than I want to be, and I've also discovered a tremendous advantage: that as long as I can inspire my peers, the young sons and daughters of the industrialists who will inherit businesses, and bring them along to parts of the poverty-stricken world where they may have been too scared to go, to breathe in all the truth and appreciate the beauty that's within, there are many who can benefit. (Case in point: the CTO's son is tagging along to Cambodia and Laos villages, and he thought the idea of saving up to "buy" doctors/teachers/socialworkers for a poor village was something he also wants to do too. Also, I gave a lot of encouragement/advice for a Wharton friend for his trip around Southern Africa.) So here it is, the long story behind the scenes, the internal dialogue, a personal story tempered by the months of re-thinking what I went through: being dragged through mud, wearing the scarlet letter, and paying the price for being "Chinese" and "Girl." It's funny but for the painful lessons I learned, I would go through it all over again--guilt, sadness, despair, vomit, bitter vengeance and all. ............................................................................ Oh! Did I tell you that these weeks, the factory workers have been having a magical time, being treated out to evenings with my accrued meal reimbursements and sedan rides and salons? It takes tremendous effort to coax them for a girls' night out because all the working class still firmly believe "there's-no-such-thing-as-a-free-lunch" and they won't go (boy I HATE that uncreative thinking: how would you ever come to enjoy life's infinite number of free things if you honestly believed that?) but I skip two meals and eat crackers, so that I can invite a big group to a fabulous night on the town. I feel like a genie, dispensing wishes! It's more than they've seen in a lifetime, which is really awkward when I'm younger than they are and they think I'm a gadzillionaire, but it's thrilling to see the glimmering excitement in people's eyes after so much drabness, and for them to forget their cordial "I'm-fine" politeness and laugh-until-they-snort, and complain about crappy life is without worrying about me firing them. I've invited them to see photographs of the entire world, used Google Earth to open their eyes. They ask me: " Why are you this way?" Really, I can't thank them enough. One time, while doing our hair at the salon, the girls leaned forward and asked me why I always walked all the time if it was so dangerous; hadn't I heard of all the purse-grabbing and rogues-on-motorcycles who pushed girls down and took everything? I replied that luckily it had never happened to me, but they pressed: " ...But aren't you afraid? Are the girls in America all so healthy to walk such long distances and scared of nothing at all? What would an American girl do if a man wrestled your belongings in the streets? " It took me a while to think of the answer, because to my knowledge, unarmed assault didn't happen as often in the United States, and I said, "I guess if an assailant was wrestling for our purse without a weapon, and there was a violent struggle, American girls would zap him ,"---explaining that a stun gun is an non-lethal electrocution of 500,000 volts that would cause him to paralyze and drop like a roach ---"and when he's down, kick him really hard in the stomach and 'down there' like a Ronaldinho goalshot, and if he hurt us, spray his face with Mace, "--adding that the stinging chemical that causes breathing and eye problems for an hour. I hope I did not mislead them, because what I considered an appropriate response to such a threatening scenario, THEY COULD NOT STOP LAUGHING UNTIL THEY CRIED. They said they had never heard of such brilliant Western customs that if I could bring some self-defense gadgets, they'd love to pay for it. Uh, I guess that's why it doesn't happen as often in America, and I checked that it wasn't restricted in China. So woe be those who are the first suckers to find out. Until my departure from Guangdong, which is like Atlantic City meets Vegas on acid hype, second only to Shanghai in cultural viciousness and subterfuge, I alone relish in the small things that slips unnoticed by anyone else of importance… the palm-sized caracole snails that emerge after wet morning rain, leaving behind iridescent slime…the fluttering midnight bats (seriously there are bats!) that only swoop in and out of moonlit shadows…the chorus of sewer frogs, that precipitate from trees and especially the two lone amphibians that swim around our marbly fountain pool (yes, I check every day)… solid beetles that look like acorns, millipedes, and friendly cockroaches that disgust everyone else. Me and my camera, a tag team, in pursuit of the creepy crawlies that make me not-quite-womanly yet. Not a girl, not yet...VictoriaP.S. Sorry I can't view some of your websites, a slew of censorship and slow internet connection makes it hard to see anything that requires a lot of bandwidth unless I'm in Hong Kong WiFi. I'll write more about travels around this China's other provinces next time. Less