Video from Taipei 101, currently the world’s tallest occupied building, during the annual New Year’s fireworks. (2009 is the year of the cow (牛 / niú).

Ben Ross photographs and translates the public service sex ed murals from Yu Village in Southern Hebei. Actually talking about sex is still too embarrassing for most Mainlanders, including parents and teachers, so local governments have to find creative ways to get information to the public. Giant wall murals like the one linked above are one way.

Pronounced: xīn nián kuàilè
Means: Happy New Year!

What could a lǎowài (老外) do in 2009 to better adjust to life in China? The list below contains some of the ideas I’ve collected (they’re not all mine), and I’m curious to hear what other ideas are out there. Bonus points for creativity, usefulness, and doability. Mucho uber bonus points if it’s Tianjin specific!

(If you don’t live in China, this should still be an interesting window into daily life in Tianjin.)

Some of these are easier than others, and each will suit some personalities better than others. Some are a one-time deal, some involve altering our lifestyle. All of them have potential to enhance our experience of Tianjin/China and create new opportunities for friendship.

Get a Clue

1) Read the local news.
Your neighbours probably also read the local news, or at least hear it word-of-mouth. It’s a good way to start finding out what people are thinking and talking about, and what’s going on in the city. You don’t have to be in it for China’s hard-hitting investigative journalism; just scan the headlines and ledes. Staying up on local news pulls us one step closer to the local experience and provides plenty of conversation fodder.

2) Visit the 3rd floor of the Tianjin Museum.
Tianjin is historically significant to China, especially where foreigners are concerned, but do you know why? Your neighbours do. A couple hours on the 3rd floor of the Tianjin Museum (天津博物馆) at the Yínhé Gōngyuán (银河公园 – the big park/plaza on Yǒuyì Lù/友谊路 next to the amusement park) will clue you in. It has plenty of English, and if you spend an afternoon walking and reading through the chronological displays that narrate Tianjin and China’s forced entry into the modern era, you’ll get a fine introduction to modern history from the official and popular Chinese perspective, and the respective places that foreigners and Tianjin each have in it. This particular historical narrative influences how Mainlanders see the world, and becoming familiar with it will help you better understand yourself as a foreigner in Tianjin.

3) Start paying attention to the lunar calendar’s key dates and mini-seasons.
Ever notice how sometimes what people wear isn’t necessarily dictated by how hot or cold it is outside, or how suddenly one night people go out and burn piles of paper in the street? The Chinese lunar calendar still impacts modern life through the traditions observed by many families in Tianjin. Taking note of the lunar calendar will help clue you in to the annual rhythms of life here.

4) Take Chinese lessons.
…even if you’re only planning to be here for a year or two, and even if it’s only part time with a private tutor who’s doubling as your ayi. Even taxi Chinese is better than no Chinese.

Start Living in Your Neighbourhood

5) Your neighbourhood bike repairman, security guards, food vendors, etc. are not named “Ni Hao” and “Xie Xie.” These are people you see everyday! Learn their names and appropriate titles, and make a point to take time to chat on your way in and out.

6) Go out for walks in the park after dinner – make it a habit.
If you haven’t noticed, after dinner is prime time in Tianjin’s parks. Near where we live along the canal south of the TV tower, people are out with their kids, chatting, dancing, rollerblading, flying kites, snogging, and exercising en masse in all but the most oppressive weather. Hiding inside after dinner every night can seem a little strange. The Yínhé Park on Yǒuyì Lù is another prime spot for after dinner family fun.

7) Get your fruit and vegetables from the vegetable market, not the supermarket.
At your local càishìchǎng (菜市场) you’ll see the same vendors every time, and they have time. At the supermarket it’s just a random anonymous cashier who’s in a hurry because of the lineup. (*Avoid bottled and packaged goods in the vegetable market, as these are often fake. Better chances with these things at the supermarket.)

8 ) What kind of public activities are going on in your neighbourhood?
We can see the neighbourhood activity centre from our windows, and we’ve seen everything from fashion shows to Beijing Opera going on in there. Get aware of the activities in your area and drop in on one or two.

Local Skills, Local Thrills

9) Go outside for a walk before midnight on Chinese New Year’s Eve.
It’s a total blast! Last year we were just south of the TV Tower along the canal when midnight hit on Chinese New Year; we won’t forget those sights and sounds anytime soon.

10) Learn to dance… in public.
I can think of at least three different parks near our apartment that have dancing daily or nightly. I’ve seen public dancing groups doing everything from the cha-cha to the macarena to the tango. This is a fun, potentially romantic opportunity too good to miss.

11) Visit the marriage market (that’s right: marriage market) at Tianjin’s Central Park (中心公园；Zhōngxīn Gōngyuán) in the heart of the old French concession area. On weekends in good weather, from morning until xiūxi time (Chinese siesta) in the early afternoon, hundreds of parents converge on the park to search for and screen potential mates on behalf of their children. It is the friendliest crowd I’ve found in the city. Language students will have more speaking opportunities than they can handle, and anyone with an interest in China, Chinese society, and Chinese culture will find it an interesting example of how Tianjin’s citizens are dealing with Chinese society’s rapid changes and pressures.

12) Learn to kick a jiànzi (毽子；also called a qiàor in Tianjin).
…those feathered Chinese hackeysack things that sound like coins when you kick them. They’re fun, and if you start kicking one of these around in a park with friends, people will invariably come close to watch, waiting to be invited into your circle.

13) Learn how to haggle in the market.
Tianjiners don’t do a lot of haggling, but they do haggle some and it can feel a little weird when haggling is completely absent. It’s not about the 5 máo.

14) Learn to play Chinese chess, and challenge one or more of your neighbourhood retirees to a game. You might be surprised to witness how a two-player game can suddenly become a team sport.

15) Do your reading in a public place.
If you’ve got reading to do and the weather’s decent, do it on a park bench. Eventually someone will come over and start talking to you.

Unlike many other big cities, many of Tianjin’s neighbourhoods and public parks are still characterized by small-town friendliness. This New Year is as good a time as any to start experiencing more of Tianjin’s local character.

Any more ideas out there…?

Our teachers love UNO. And the way they play is 100 times better than the way I learned growing up.

There’s even a Chinese rip-off version of it called “Who’s Afraid of Who?” (谁怕谁？), which is essentially the same but the cards are look different. What makes Chinese UNO better are the house rules our teacher’s use, which make things faster, more violent, and more luàn (乱/chaotic):

• 0 – trade hands with anyone you choose.
• 7 – last person to slap the discard pile has to draw two.
• You can play an identical card as the most recent discard at any time, and play continues to your right or left, depending on which way you’re going at the time.
• If the person beside you plays a Draw Two or Draw Four against you, you can play the same on top of it and pass the accumulating penalty on to the next person.
• The worst loser gets punished.

I don’t even know if this is “Chinese” UNO, if our teachers just made up extra rules, or if foreigners who learned some other version of UNO taught our teachers how to play. Either way, they love it.

These two photos are from this afternoon.

Christmas Eve, 2008 (written at 4:30pm)
When I parked my bike outside the gym before lunch, “Uncle” Li, who watches the bikes and sometimes feels my pants to see if I’m wearing enough layers, was talking with his taxi driver buddies trying to figure out which comes first: Peaceful Night (平安夜/Christmas Eve) or Christmas. “Christmas Eve is tomorrow, right? And today is Christmas?” he guessed. Less than two hours later I eavesdropped on the same basic conversation in a hole-in-the-wall noodle shop while eating lunch, except this time the chef guessed correctly.

Santa Claus decorations are everywhere, but Christmas isn’t all that meaningful to the average Mainlander; even some Mainland Christians have told me how the holiday doesn’t really mean anything special to them. Everyone still goes to work like any other day, even the English teachers. But this doesn’t mean there isn’t noticeable curiosity in something that many Mainlanders see as exotic. Every year Christmas services in Tianjin are packed, even by Chinese standards (I suspect this might also be due to the relatively small number of churches).

The two main churches in town are “Old Xīkāi” (老西开), a French cathedral in what’s become the most popular and trendy shopping district, and Shānxī Road (山西路), a TSPM church not too far away from Xīkāi Cathedral. Tonight at Shānxī Lù, for example, one of our English teacher friends says her students plan to get there at 4:30 for a Christmas Eve service that starts at 7:00 because they’re afraid they might not all get seats otherwise.

Xīkāi is offering an English-language “foreign passport holders only” service in a building next door to the cathedral at 6:30pm, and a Chinese-language midnight mass that is open to all (I assume, as I’m going). The only Chinese nationals in attendance at the English-language service will be the choir. Part of the rationale for not having the English service in the cathedral, which is beautiful, is because it’s Christmas Eve and it would be difficult to hold the service amidst the hordes of local tourists who will be running around taking pictures. Part of the rationale for forbidding locals to attend an English language church service presided over by a foreigner is… outside the scope of this post. (Photo at left is not from Xīkāi.) You can read Xīkāi’s English introduction for yourself here.

Originally we were getting sent by the magazine to do some PR at a 5-star hotel Christmas banquet, but that fell through at the last minute. Jessica has a miserable cold and is going to bed early, otherwise I’d suggest we take a stab at both churches. Instead, I’ll go alone and meet a friend at the midnight mass. I know, I’m a terrible husband, sneaking off without my wife to go to church on Christmas Eve! In the morning we’ll skype our families.

In Tianjin it’s easy for Christmas to come and go without feeling like it’s come and gone — I want something significant and meaningful to mark the event. Plus I’m curious to see the local Tianjin Christmas curiosity for myself. I wonder if the crowds will be less at a midnight mass this year on account of it being midnight on a weekday. We’ll see! It will be maybe my second time ever to attend any kind of mass.

[*...fast-forward about eight hours...*]

Christmas Morning, 2008 (written at 12:20am)
The banner says (I think):

“Celebrate/congratulate Jesus holy birth”
慶賀耶稣聖誕
qìnghè Yēsū shèngdàn

Legions of police were deployed for crowd control for blocks around the church. I arrived just after 11pm (an hour early). I joined the crowd and was effectively herded in one side door of the church, past the altar, and out the other side door. On the way in some people (who were almost all young people) stopped to light candles. A kid next to me made the sign of the cross while walking past the altar. The seating area, which was packed solid wall to wall with several hundred, maybe over a thousand people, was roped off. I didn’t have time to even think about pulling out the camera and finding a seat was out of the question. Shannon’s English students who went three hours early to the Shānxī Lù church had the right idea. We exited the church grounds through the main gate, where cops with megaphones told us to hurry it up.

The cathedral is in Tianjin’s biggest trendiest outdoor shopping district, and tonight it was literally “people mountain people sea” (人山人海). It was a real festival atmosphere, with lots of street food vendors, balloons, young people, a stage show with clowns, and that special battery-powered bling Chinese love so much (most popular battery-powered headgear: Santa hats with flashing red hearts, devil horns, bunny ears, and carnival masks).

Christmas is seen by many as a lovers’ holiday somewhat akin to Valentine’s Day, and of course, a time to shop. Thousands of midnight shoppers wanted to come take photos of the cathedral and they crowded around the police lines with their cameras. With all the police barricades, it took me 15 minutes to walk from the church back to my bike; normally that’d be a one minute walk. This was the scene facing away from the cathedral’s main gate toward the shopping streets:

I am cold and sleepy and going to bed! Merry Christmas! 圣诞快乐！

Pronounced: píng ān yè
Literally: peaceful night
Means: Christmas Eve

* “Merry Christmas” is “Shèng-dàn kuài-lè” (圣诞快乐)!

End of the semester for the Bright Future sex ed class
The same weekend as the bath house/octopus wrestling adventure, we also spent an afternoon playing games, baking Christmas cookies, and having fun with local university students that attended the sexuality class Jessica’s been volunteering with this semester. Jessica’s actually been volunteering regularly every semester, and this weekend was sort of the end-of-semester party. The students are fun and the cookies are good. For more on the sex ed class, see here, here, and here, or see the links at the end of this post. Jessica has a million interesting stories from observing these classes each semester — the class is for many students their first time to have any real sexual education. Kristi, our friend who heads up the whole project and teaches the classes (in Chinese!), could (and should!) write a book.

SNOW!
After Joel’s eventful evening at the bathhouse, he returned home…at that time, around 10:30 pm, the ground was still dry. However, when I left my friend’s house at about 11:15, there was already about an inch of snow on the ground and it was falling fast. By the time I got home about 20 minutes later, I was covered from head to toe with snow…and had icicles in my hair. Since it hardly ever snows in Tianjin, it wasn’t difficult to convince Joel that we should go out for a nice romantic midnight walk in the snow. He put all of his stuff back on, we strolled along the canal and down to the TV tower. The snow was still falling pretty heavily, and it was so peaceful and still outside, aside from the occasional whoops of joy from the other few people out playing in it.

Tianjin is so dry that last winter we basically didn’t get any snow. Our local friends say that when they were little Tianjin used to get decent snow every year, but no these days. We’ve seen only two “big” snows since we got here…one two days after we arrived back in Feb. 2007, and the one this weekend. I did see a few flakes fall on my birthday last year, but I was the ONLY one that saw them…so they must have been a special gift just for me. One local friend speculated that the dryness has to do with the deforestation and desertification in Inner Mongolia, which is where Tianjin’s weather blows in from. Either way, we weren’t expecting snow for Christmas, so this is extra special.

Once we got to the TV tower, we found some untouched areas of snow…fell backwards into them and made some snow angels. We would have made a snow man too, but we didn’t think about it until after we were already soaked from making the snow angels. Note to self for next time we get this much snow in Tianjin: Snowman first, and THEN snow angels. It was an awesome walk…we finally came home around 1:30 in the morning…but were so excited that it took quite a while to fall asleep.

Unfortunately at this point two days later, there is very little white snow left…and the slush on the roads is BLACK.

There’s no getting around the ankle-deep icy muddy slush that’s covered Tianjin’s roads for most of the last two days. Tianjin city deals with the snow by sending out saltwater trucks and legions of migrant workers who shovel all the ice and slush into three-wheel carts.

The worst of it had melted away by the time I took this photo this afternoon. I (Joel) spent two hours biking across town and back yesterday; bald road-bike tires (what most people have) weren’t made for this stuff. Navigating major intersections full of taxis, buses, bikes, and three-wheel carts sure is a lot more interesting though, especially when you don’t want to lose momentum and have to put your foot down.

I’ve wanted to spend an evening at a local bath house ever since getting a peek inside one in Tianjin’s doomed hutongs. Watching the movie Shower made we want to go even more. Tonight we finally got around to it, and the “Same Fortune Bathing Garden” (同福浴園) didn’t disappoint! It’s not every day that you return home feeling like you’ve just lost a wrestling match to a giant octopus.

There are three public bathhouses in our area that I know of: the two neighbourhood bath houses and one full-on for-profit business. Everyone, and here “everyone” means Mr. Lu the bike repairmen and Mr Chang the sidewalk barber and their friends, said they don’t go to the 5 kuài ($0.75) neighbourhood ones because they’re too dirty. They all recommended the one that’s a step up from the poor-apartment-plumbing-compensation neighbourhood bathhouses. It’s bigger and costs 4 kuài more. So me and two friends (one American and one local) took their advice and went to the 10 kuài ($1.50) one after dinner tonight.

Tianjin’s Same Fortune Bathing Garden (同福浴園): the Good, the Bad, and the I-Can’t-Believe-I-Just-Saw-That

The three of us met for guōtiēr (锅贴儿; pot stickers) before heading to the “Same Fortune Bathing Garden,” which was next door to the restaurant. We exchanged our shoes for locker keys and flip flops. Paying 12 kuài ($1.75) meant we got a new towel that we could keep; 10 kuài would get you a public towel that you would have to leave behind. We stripped down, stowed our stuff, and walked in our flip flops into the bath area.

The bathing area
There were showers and a bathroom along one wall (each shower had a plastic stand with public soap bars and pump shampoo), three massage tables in the middle, and two pools along the other wall. Each pool was the size of a large public hot tub in North America. One pool was warm, and the other really hot. A sign on the wall listed all the different services you could have: different kinds of massages with different kinds of lotions (using Chinese medicine, green tea, etc.), fire cupping (see below), toothpaste (who doesn’t love brushing their teeth in the shower?), and stuff like that. The most expensive massage used some kind of Chinese medicinal stuff and cost 40 kuài ($5.85). There were maybe six or seven customers in the bath area, and three attendants in briefs manned the massage tables, which were kept pretty busy. Seemed the most popular thing tonight was to get slathered head-to-toes in some sort of soapy-looking lotion. I was surprised — though after almost two years in Tianjin I probably shouldn’t be — at how the masseuses soaped their patrons everywhere. This was no sissy drape-a-towel-over-your-mid-section kind of soap down.

The bath house crowd
The bath house patrons were all middle-aged and up, and true to Tianjin form, they were happy to chat and were a lot of fun. Some said they go there every weekend, others said once a month. Some of them knew the staff and other patrons by name. This is one of my favourite aspects of Tianjin: people love to chat. You can sit naked on the side of a tub with people you’ve never met before and have a grand old conversation all evening long if you want. And in every group there’s always a couple of real characters to who love to joke around and have fun. We decided we definitely want to go back to this place.

I’m including this next paragraph only because it was a notable part of the experience. In addition to the “xiǎo jies” in another section of the bath house, there was another aspect of this public bath that I wasn’t particularly impressed with. There is a very handy squatty potty right next to the showers, but guys standing in the middle area where the massage tables were didn’t seem to feel the need to use it, as if taking the four seconds to walk over to it weren’t worth the effort. I suppose since we’re all wearing flip flops it doesn’t matter? Also, exfoliation is a popular aspect of going to public baths. The side of the tub has a pumice stone for people to use, and if you look in the water you can easily see that it gets a lot of use. The water doesn’t have any chemicals in it, at least not any that I could smell. We noticed all this when we first got in, but just instantly put it out of our minds for the rest of the evening and had a great time.

Getting a little sketchy…
Once we were dizzy from the heat (and still bloated from all the guōtiēr), we took showers, dried off (big towels provided), and put on some boxer shorts and a shirt (also provided). Then we walked out of the bath area into another section of the bath house. It was a large, very dimly lit room with booths of two beds each, all facing two big TVs on the front wall that played Chinese soap operas. Maybe 20 or 30 beds total. Middle aged men were chatting, smoking, or getting foot massages from young pretty girls. The second floor was rows of private rooms that ringed the main floor, like in a hotel. Hanging greenery obscured the view from the main floor. When Mr Lu and his buddies were discussing this bath house, they mentioned that there were xiǎo jies (小姐; “little miss” or “little sister,” also a euphemism for prostitutes).

Fire Cupping — 拔火罐儿 — bá huǒ guànr
Imagine losing a wrestling match to a giant octopus who pins you on your stomach for 15 minutes. That’s the best way I can describe what it feels like to bá huǒ guànr (拔火罐儿) — get fire cupping done to you. A guy lights a match under a class bulb and then sticks in on your skin. The heat creates really strong suction and it stays stuck to you until he pulls it off with a big sucking noise 10 minutes later. I’m not totally sure what it’s all supposed to do for you, other than give you a bunch of really big hickeys, but it’s a really common East Asian health treatment. It’s not uncommon to see people with red marks showing above the back of their collar, especially in the gym. It cost 10 kuài ($1.50) to have it done.

I waited on one bed and my Chinese friend waited on the other. Rob, the American, came in from the bathing area just as an older guy brought a plastic tub full of glass bulbs and a lighter. I laid down on my stomach and he stuck seventeen of them to my back, each time lighting the lighter inside right before he pressed the rim of the bulb down onto my skin. It wasn’t painful, but the suction was really strong. Once they were all on he put a heavy blanket over top. Ten minutes later he removed the blanket and pull the cups off one by one, leaving seventeen big puffy red welts behind.

The swelling has mostly gone down now (about three hours later), and some of them feel like a slight bruise. They’re still really red; don’t know how long that will last. Jessica’s on the way home from the night out a some friends’, so I’ll get to show her in a few minutes!

[PS - It snowed in Tianjin tonight!! So instead of showing Jessica my new hickeys when she got in, we went right back out for a little romantic midnight walk through the snow. See how much fun Tianjin is??]

Related Posts:

• Tianjin bathhouse guasha: OWW!!!
• Getting guasha’d (刮痧) and octopussed (拔火罐) in a Tianjin bathhouse
• Fire-Cupping & Guasha for Dummies
• Chinese Medicine: Getting a Clue (Part 1)

See these translated headlines – taken from Hu’s speach on the 30th anniversary of China’s Reform & Opening – for what may become the next new big slogans. I wonder if we’ll see these on read banners in our neighbourhood any time soon.