From: lulu@ucrengr.ucr.edu (david lu)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american
Subject: Re: Looking for roots
Date: 26 Sep 92 18:32:55 GMT
Organization: University of California, Riverside


First, I'd like to congratulate whoever it is that started
this discussion.  It's certainly a nice change from the
75% of the flame articles in this group that I kill just
from reading the Subject line.

My father is from China, my mother Taiwan.  I'll talk about
my trip back to China first, and then Taiwan.  I was originally
born in Taiwan.  But because I came here to the US when I was
still just a kid, I consider myself pretty much an American.

I went back to China in July, 1989, just a month after
Tienanmen (I have a US Passport, so I didn't anything more
than an extra glance from the Shanghai airport security).
I have to admit that it was very difficult getting used to
China, not because of any language differences (I can speak
Mandarin), but because the country was just so poor.  We
went back to my father's hometown in the country.  The
majority of the houses there, and the local hotes, don't
have running water.  Water has to be fetched daily from a
well about a mile away.  The only toilets available are the
public ones, and they are nothing more than holes in the
ground, and you have to provide your own toilet paper.  You
can smell these public toilets from feets away, because they
don't have running water to flush away the wastes.  The wastes
are simply collected by local farmers to be used as fertilizers
for their rice fields.  Some hotels has public showers, but
most simply give you a bucket of warm water.  I'd like to
emphasize that this is in a *small town*.  Hotels in Shanghai
and major tourist sites are much better equipped.

Western amenities aside, the people are *extremely* nice.  All
our relatives treated me very well, even though it's the first
time that I've met any of them.  The strongest impression that
the population there made on me was the amount of leisure time
that they have!  All my cousins work only two or three hours a
day, three or four days a week.  They then spend the rest of the
the time just sitting around and talk to one another.  This is
apparently the norm among people who don't live in major cities.
The communist government pay them full wages for doing hardly
hardly any work at all!  The explaination I got from this is
that there are so many people in China, and not having enough
jobs to go around for everybody, each person only has to work a
few hours a week.  They don't believe that people from such an
"advanced" country like the US has to work 40 hours a week in
order to make a living!  They envy us for living in the US,
but I have to wonder that how many of us, giving the choice,
would be willing to give up our computer, our television, our
CD player, our refrigerator, our running water and clean toilets,
to live a life where there is a guaranteed life-long job security
at full pay for working only 10-15 hours a week.  No need to
worry about bills.  No job stress.  Not much of a chance to make
it rich, but at least you know you will never starve.  I don't
think that I will chose that lifestyle personally, but I can't
help but think that perhaps Marx did have a point, after all.

While I enjoyed my visit to China, I don't think that I will
care to go back again.  Well, at least not until they've fixed
the toilet problem. :)  Taiwan, on the other hand, was very
nice.  I went back to Taiwan earlier this summer, and I loved
it!  I was there for almost four weeks, and I didn't have enough.
I can't wait to visit it again.  Being an industralized nation,
it doesn't have any of the bathroom problems in China.  I find
that most of the population lives in condos not much unlike
apartments here in the states.  Again, all my relatives treated
us very well, and took us all over the island to visit different
sight-seeing spots.  The food is some of the best I have ever
tasted, and the nightlife is something that you just cannot
experience here in the States.  The population is very friendly
to me, even though nobody knows that I'm actually an American
(most random people I met on the streets thought I live there).
In fact, due to my fluent English and Mandarin, one girl started
talking to me in Cantonese because she thought that I was from
Hong Kong!  My only regret is that I can't speak Taiwanese, so
I can't talk to my grandfather.

If you can at least get by in Mandarin, I would strongly
recommend that you visit Taiwan sometimes.  And even if you
only speak English, most of the younger generation in Taiwan
can get by with a few words of English.  China is also a nice
place to visit, but due to some of the inconveniences, I
would stick to the large cities and tourist attractions.
But no matter which place you go, you'll find that the people
are very nice, and are always willing to share their experiences
and cultures with you, and listen to your stories about the
American culture.

				- David

-- 
---==lulu@ucrengr==---  just another overworked graduate student.
David T Lu, Amateur Thinker: lulu@ucrengr.ucr.edu, {ucsd, uci}!ucrengr!lulu
"I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle."
					- Arthur Dent, Hitchhiker's