The Chinese love doing the peace sign for photos: the index finger and forefinger held up like a pair of rabbit ears. Children use the sign and waggle the hand to show they are happy. It is even a way of saying hello. Sometimes the use of the gesture is deliciously resistant to meaning, or perhaps means what Westerners know: peace brother, peace sister. Be cool, my china.
For the Chinese the sign does not mean peace; it means victory. Victory from the old dynastic way of rule and the ushering in of communism, which they like to think set them free. It took several decades of heartache to figure out that “freedom” was very wrong. I found the hand gesture, used ad nauseum, most curious when I first arrived in China.
I admire the new reforms and changes spreading like fireworks through Shanghai as we prepare for World Expo 2010. Around where we live you would think we live in a virtual slum (been there, done that in our first year in China: awesome stuff).
Here’s the link to my web album on our immediate surroundings.
Do visit; the album will perhaps give you far more insight into what I mean when I go on about cultural shocks in some blogs.
Yet, jostling near these gaunt images in the album is the stately buttercup yellow Jing’an Temple, beautifully preserved; a variety of clothing boutiques; a classic Chinese park where the oldsters practice Tai Chi among the willows, which thoughtfully dip their downy quills in ponds where old castles’ walls also shimmer in the waters; and restaurants offering cuisines from all over the planet.
And yet a couple of hundred metres away from all that, our area looks like a slum for the nonce, because buildings everywhere are being torn down and new ones will be thrown up to showcase Shanghai to the world in 2010. (It is with great difficulty that you cannot see at least one crane on the horizon in Shanghai.)
For the first few years after we left South Africa, I seldom thought about the home country, felt no pangs, no longings. I love living here in Shanghai, though I could do with a bit more real countryside close by. But now, after so many years “in exile”, I feel such nostalgia.
Now I would love to hike over Table Mountain again, end up going down through Cecilia forest and Constantia to that hotel across the road in Bishop’s Court to enjoy a beer. I forget the name of that hotel. I first did the walk when I was 21 with an American slightly older than me (who always had to wear snow-skiing sunglasses), whose name I still remember – John.
Memories like that have opened up a whole rainbow of memories: a scintillating band of nostalgia linking me to the faraway place of my birth, where I spent the first forty years of life living in different parts of SA.
I was born in Durban and we moved to Van Riebeek’s Park in Jo’burg when I was seven. A few months later I went to Saint Andrews’ boarding school in Bloemfontein. Natal, Transvaal and the OFS by the age of seven. Not bad going. After the first couple of holidays home from boarding school my Dad picked me up at Jan Smuts Airport and drove, not to Van Riebeek’s Park, but to a farming area in Boksburg where we lived for many years. Later on I would also live in Grahamstown, Cape Town, Fish Hoek and, for the most part, in the northern suburbs of Jo’burg. Many memories, fragrant as rained-on fynbos, now suddenly emerge; pollen flung across a field of khakibos in a gust of wind.
I think part of the reason why I feel the sudden surge of nostalgia is that Shanghai is soon going to grant, for free, permanent residence to foreigners who meet certain requirements. We meet the requirements. I shuddered as my wife Marion showed me that in the newspapers.
I truly could not understand that shudder initially, at least with my mind, the purely neural, discursive route that often ignores the intelligence of the body, the spirit mysteriously housed in the body.
My eyes widened, smarted, as I looked at the gift the Chinese are planning to offer us: a place to stay, you can belong here: go where you please, work as you please. No more nonsense with work permits and justifying our existence.
It hit me finally: we have tried living in three countries (England, New Zealand and different parts of China) for nearly five years. The ride has often been fun and instructive, but there was an underlying trauma. My wife and I have always been foreigners, looking through the window, not invited to the table to sup, be part of a family. You don’t know what you have until you no longer have it. Fish discover water last.
Look, we have enjoyed the ride for the most part, but what got that electric shiver going through my body took Santa Claus China putting us in his lap to offer us one of the most precious things a person can be offered: a home. A place where we can belong. Of course my wife decided immediately on what kind of apartment we are going to buy.
I find myself raising my hand and waving it in that curious V for Victory sign at all around me (mostly curious Chinese), nearly all the time.
A South African born Irishman with slowly slanting eyes? Agh, toe.
Where do you belong?
I prefer Devon, with a keg of scrumpy cider, over an Indian or Chineses (meal) surrounded by unwashed weirdos in hilarious clothes, after spending two days camping, listening to electronic folk music and Bhangra-Afrobeat music, before going home to slap down (metaphorically) the Black Zimbabwean Grand Niece.
I was also born in Scotland but cant stand Whiskey unless its a good sinlge malt, and only have a mild tendency to eat lots of fish, and fry everything.
The Global Village has arrived, you just have to find your niche in it, although it takes some time.
“The Global Village has arrived, you just have to find your niche in it, although it takes some time.”
The global village is indeed a village with a village mentality. Silly and petty requirements obstruct a free movement from one street to another street. I cannot go and live two streets further South without having submitted a waddle of papers followed by interviews with fishy eyed uninterested civil servants who pretend to keep their side of the street clean.
Unless I can swing around a bag full of monetary goodies in the required nominations, I cannot go and/or stay in the area of my choice in the global village. How global does that sound?
Rod, just as a matter of interest: can you -in your new status- vote in China? Or is it just the two fingers of approval in the air?
Anyway, congratulations with your promotion on the global ladder. Make sure it does not conflict with the NZ immigration rules
)
Hotel in Bishopscourt after coming down through Cecilia forest and Constantia? The Alphen hotel?
Anyways, nice one on the perm residence – does that mean you will be stopping to pose for photographs at every Christmas/Chinese New Year/Easter decoration, manically waving ‘v’signs around?
Problem is that Chinese rulers are renown for changing their minds for the hell of it.
You may suddenly find that freedom you have been granted as a citizen disappears into the ether over night.
Without bursting any bubbles I recall all too clearly the regisration of doctors and interlectuals in the 70′s and the showcase 80′s freedom of expression. Neither lasted too long.
My distrust tells me that they want to
“reorginise” the list of foreigners and be sure of the count.
Really sorry everyone. I forgot to spell check.
I should check to see if they have done the same thing for Beijing residents too. I know that the government has been talking about this for more then two years now. It remains to be seen how much more they will open up China to foriegners but there are clear policy and economic reasons to attarct as many foreigners, perticularly from the developed “Western” countries as possible.
I think you’ve hit on a rare truth there. I think an awful lot of white South Africans – ever since the various ‘If you don’t like it you can leave’ statements of various ANC politicians have felt like foreigners in their own country, second-class citizens whose opinion and contribution are so irrelevant that they can be told to voetsek. That they are of lesser value and must sit at the back of the bus. Yes, there is an element of payback there — but it is a payback for being born with a skin colour rather than for anything they may personally have done (didn’t the previous victims learn anything? It’s like boarding-school initiation being perpetuated by last year’s victims). That alienation makes something like being a desirable migrant to another country, wanted, accepted, with the same respect and rights as is due any other citizen of that country, able to become a full-fledged citizen in time, seem an acknowledgement of worth. It’s a world apart from ‘barely tolerated’ attitude the same person feels here. It is the source of ‘Well, I’ll go where I’m wanted then’ for many valuable people, possibly even more so than factors like crime. It’s quite typical for such ‘new citizens’ to be fiercely patriotic to their new home, and to make enormous contributions to it. At the same time they will, whenever the opportunity presents, see if they can screw the old country (and they’re often going to become leaders in their fields, once out of here). It’s a lose-lose for South Africa and even the migrant, so often. But until the South African government acknowledges the value of these citizens, and backs that up with actions to reassure them that it’s not just hot air, white (and probably coloured and Indian) South Africans are going go somewhere they can give loyalty and have it returned. Of course it will be very people the country can least afford to lose, who will be desirable elsewhere.
BTW, I was also at St Andrew’s about 4 years before you, went to Rhodes, UCT for masters, and now write for a living. I’ve got 10 books in print, 5 more in press, and contracts for another three. And yes, I also want to discover water.
That web album can now be visited – I could not get into it before from the blog, but TL fixed it. Its worth it, it is the first album you see, top left corner.
- Hugh I hear you. End of the day we will probably end in New Zealand. China is a backup. And we have EU passports. But this country (China) certainly Shanghai is very earnestly sorting things out. The country on the whole is now a far cry from the cultural revolution days. Getting work permits every year is actually very easy, four hundred RMB for eleven months.
I really think China wants to attract more and more skilled people. Their own education systems definitely have some shortcomings but… see what I am doing? I am actually defending our adopted country.
- Ian – yep!
Dave Freer – your comment has not passed moderation yet, I can see it on my side (of course it will pass moderation). Well done on all the publications. Saint Andrew’s Bloemfontein? That’s where I was at, not Grahamstown.
Let me know of any publishers or agencies you can recommend for all my books. Thanks.
If you have a work permit for eleven months at 400 RMB, then what do you do in the other month?
For your info:
I recently found out what the “proper name” for Cape Town is in Chinese:
开普钝
Phonetic: Kai Pu(3) Dun
Literal Transliteration, (one of the meanings)): Open Universal Honest.
Poetic hey?
Sorry, typing error, (In Chinese), Cape Town should be:
开普敦
Got wrong Dun. Chinese word processor on Western Windows operating System occasionally stamps on chop sticks.
Saint Andrews Bloemfontein. I was in Twells and matriculated in ’76. You were presumably also taught English by Mr Morrell? Who – when I told him I wanted to be an author said : “Freer you can’t make a living at it, and besides you can’t spell.” I believed him. He was right about the spelling. I write principally social satire in Science Fiction clothing, so a very different arena. Still – general advice. The UK is a closed shop, unless you’re agented. The US is, oddly, patchily much more friendly. (I read various anti-American diatribes with some amusement. A country 300 million people, almost all recent immigrants, is not monolithic. Hell, I’ll bet China isn’t). Check out any agents and publications on ‘Preditors and Editors’ website, as the field is full of scam artists taking advantage of writers hopes and dreams. This is not really an appropriate forum for naming names and discussing genre. Feel free to contact me. The address is on my website, if the M&G won’t give it to you.