Long Live the King!

Bangkok, Thailand

It's interesting to spend some time in a real working monarchy. I've been holding off this entry because I wanted to observe this phenomenon in places in Thailand other than the capital.
Having lived in UK for a long time I'm used to the British Royal Family being loved and laughed at at the same time. People will gather in the thousands when the Queen makes an appearance in London but the Royals also often find themselves at the butt end of public scrutiny, criticism, humour even and never being taken entirely seriously.
In Thailand, as I had already heard from the news, this is an entirely different story. Portraits of the King or other royals as well as depictions of the royal crest (see above) are omnipresent, from large banners in the streets to small, framed photos in people's shops and homes. The punishments for offending the King are harsh, e.g. prison sentence for what we may consider a small transgression, like painting a mustache on a portrait of the monarch.
But in a nutshell, people here love the King. And this is not imposed from above. Especially on Mondays (His Majesty was born on a Monday), many people wear yellow shirts to show their loyalty and respect. Many places also have little, for lack of a better word, shrines to the King where people burn incense to show their devotion or at least wai the shrine when they walk past it. It feels almost like a faith in its own right. To the point of being worrying sometimes. In conversations some people will reverently refer to him as "my king". I was told that the government may say what they want, for many Thai people what the King says is what counts. Many people will rather follow his wishes than the government even though the King effectively has little power. People also worry what will happen when he dies one day (he's not the youngest anymore, after all). The crown prince is not too popular, I heard, and people would rather see the second son succeed his father. The seeds for further turmoil in the Land of Smiles have already been sown.

Table manners - It's the little differences

After watching a Chinese TV show where a few boys tried to compete with each other who best knew Western table manners I realised that technically in the West things are awefully complicated when it comes to eating. There are rules about which set of cutlery to use for which dish, exactly how to hold the cutlery, where to put the napkin, etc. This even differs between different Western countries (e.g. in Italy you can tug the napkin in your collar but in Germany that's a no-no).
In China, on the other hand, all this is more relaxed and I got the impression the focus is more on the eating and enjoying the food rather than how you go about this. It seems in more up-market restaurants it's perfectly OK to spit (or at least deposit) the bones on the table, to burp (or at least belch) contently when you've finished eating or slurp your soup directly from the bowl. You're allowed to bend over the table and bring your face level with your food for convenience. So, the result of this is that when I come home from Asia my family note that I have picked up a multitude of bad habits. But as for me, I feel a lot more at home and relaxed going out for food here.

It's like a war out there - Spring Festival in China

Beijing, China

What I may have missed in terms of celebration or atmosphere during Christmas and New Year was all made up for on 6th of February. Both in significance and scale the Spring Festival - aka Chinese/Lunar New Year - is like Christmas and the Western New Year combined together. It's a time for the family to gather together, eat lots of (homecooked) food, play Mah Jongg, for children to pay respect to their grandparents and receive red packets (small red envelops containing money) in return. Like Christmas in the west this is the time when people overcome their stingy self and spend lots of money - mainly on food and on Mah Jongg. But since it's a time of renewal they also buy lots of other new things. And on fireworks. Yes, this is the time when every foreigner gets a reminder of who invented the stuff.
Starting a few days before the end of the lunar year the sound of firecrackers becomes your constant companion. There are the rockets and single crackers that we also see in the west. Then there are the famous chains that may look small and harmless (if they just have 300-odd members) but when lit produce a staccato like a full-blown machine gun. Believe me: keep your distance. Size matters not! And then you get the single big ones. They pack a boom strong enough to rattle your window and set off car alarms (and probably pace makers) at a distance.
This noise then gets a bit more intense every day until the eve of New Year. Then when you think people must have run out by now, used up their last stashes, it reaches a climax of epic proportions. At midnight that day it's like all hell breaks loose all at once. I've never seen anything like it in Europe - even in a metropolis like London or Berlin. I believe it must be loud of enough to wake up the spirits of the ancestors. And it seems to go on forever. In Europe the big climax normally fades into silence as people run out or get tired. Not so in China. Nobody seems to get tired, so things go on like this for more than an hour. At the same time the atmosphere is electrifying: young and old come outside despite the cold February night to join the fun or at least to watch. Everybody seems happy. So, I couldn't help buying some, as well, and it was great fun to make some noise. And then when my meagre supplies had run out me and my friend just stood outside being amazed.
Then the night is up and you think silence will return. And you're wrong again. New Year festivities carry on for two weeks. The only weeks of the year when it is legal in China to buy or sell firecrackers. People make the most of it. After some time it all becomes background noise. The only thing that remains is quiet amazement at how much money people are willing to spend on this. Big (1000 - 5000) chains of firecrackers easily cost hundreds of RMB. The kids love it, of course.
And then comes the second climax: 元宵节; 15 days after New Year marks the end of Spring Festival. And for one more night all hell breaks loose again as people fire about anything they have left into the air (at least, that was my impression). It goes on for hours. Once more people celebrate and traditionally eat a soup with sweet dumplings: 元宵. And finally, the war is over and almost to my disappointment silence returns - or as much as silence ever returns in a country as lively and populated as China.

哪里，哪里 - Not at all, not at all

Here's another observation about Chinese people. It's a common one made by many foreigners here but it's a very lovable one and it's always worth saying again.
While the Chinese themselves are very humble and reluctant to accept any praise they are very eager to deal it out. The most common example is that of the foreigner that just manages to pronounce the "ni hao" (hello) reasonably correctly. This will most likely earn him a praise of "oh, your Chinese is so good" or "you speak almost as good as Chinese people".
Now, while these days in Western countries it is common to acknowledge a compliment with a polite nod and a "thank you" it is considered polite in China to completely deny the compliment. Still, in areas where foreigners are common people have got used to Westerners' ways of saying "thank you". However, if you counter their compliment with an appropriate "bu hao, bu hao" (not good, not good) or "nali, nali" (not at all, not at all) you're likely to get even more praise for knowing this cultural detail. This happened even from our teachers and even though this habit is commonly mentioned in every textbook. If you then praise your opposite's English or other language proficiency this can lead to interesting exchanges of mutual praising and denying.

This habit and its consequences are nicely illustrated in a (Chinese) joke, which goes like this:
A foreigner who is just learning Chinese is meeting his Chinese friend and his wife. In class the foreigner has learnt that you should praise, so for example praise your friend's wife. So he says: "你老婆很漂亮. (Your wife is very pretty.)"
The Chinese friend, of course being humble, replies: "哪里,哪里. (not at all, but can also mean a question of "where, where abouts")"
So, the foreigner, misunderstanding, responds by pointing at the important parts of the lady's anatomy commenting: "这里漂亮,这里也漂亮... (here she's pretty, here she's also pretty)"

Of course, this habit eventually leads to the fact that you don't take any compliments seriously anymore. I just know my Chinese level is not that good. Still, in other - especially English-speaking - countries people just take for granted that your speak - or try to speak - their language. It's nice to have your ego stroked once in a while.

Jingle, jingle, thump, thump - Christmas and New Year in China

Beijing, China

Believe it or not but there is now Christmas - 圣诞节 (sheng dan jie) - in China. Maybe not surprising at all - things from the west catch on quickly, like in all of Asia. Or rather, what catches on is that Christmas sells - an all too western attitude. So, it's a very American, commercial Christmas. All big restaurants and even some small ones - whether Chinese or Western - have Santas in the window jollily proclaiming "Happy X-Mas". I swear I even saw a garbage collector who had stuck "Merry Christmas" on his tricycle. Supermarkets and shopping malls are full of songs about jingling bells and red-nosed reindeers, waiters in restaurants wear silly Santa hats. I even saw full-blown Christmas trees and sleighs with likenesses of merry, fat men on them.
Not that this would affect anybody's life though - 圣诞节 is not a holiday here. People go to work and bustle in the streets and honk at each other's cars. There is no Christmas spirit. Of course, this is to be expected - this is, after all, China, not Europe. Still, it was a strange experience to be in a place for the first time where Christmas is not a major holiday. Heck, it was even in Singapore!
Something unexpected happend, though. Something I had also never experienced in this way: I missed home. I remembered the quiet winter evenings, walks in the residential area near my home, Christmas trees in every window. There would be special programs on TV for Christmas and New Year and, of course, food specialties. And Christmas fairs. All that did not exist here. And none of the oriental specialties - no matter how attached I had got - would make up for that. Maybe for the first time I came/come to realise that as much as I love and enjoy China, as much as I enjoy being abroad sometimes, all these places sometimes just cannot give me all that my home Germany can. They can never replace home. Not forever. I've been away for so long even before I came here but maybe I had to come this far to find this little bit of wisdom. I went travelling to learn something about life, about myself. So, is that the lesson I set out to find? I'll still give it some more time.
In the end, I went for dinner with some good friends and over some hot tea and firepot we wished each other “圣诞节愉快“ - "Merry Christmas".

New Year (the solar new year, to be precise) is another Western custom that is starting to catch on but still passes many locals by without them even noticing. The big New Year festival here is calculated according to the lunar calendar and commonly falls on the end of January or beginning of February. When I called some Chinese friends to ask them their plans for New Year's Eve they replied: "Sleep, tomorrow is a working day." That sums it up.
Nonetheless some bars and clubs organise New Year parties for - mainly for foreigners who don't fly home. In the end, I wound up following some friends to what organisers claimed to be Beijing's biggest New Year party at 706 Factory. Here, the advent of 2008 was celebrated with DJs, thumping techno beats and surprisingly expensive drinks - all for the price of RMB 70 entry ticket. Not my cup of tea really but it's the company that matters. Besides, I figured, who knows when I'll next get to celebrate New Year in this exciting metropolis. Let's see what 2008 has in store...

Frohe Weihnachten und ein gutes Neues Jahr!