CHEEPY Cheepy Cheepy

Wandering through the street fair last week, I heard a faint but distinct cheeping. Little birdies lost in the crowd - looking for their mommas. I glanced down, and there they were. Crawling all over each other in their exuberance.



A crate full of chicks in the middle of a Beijing street was suprising, I'll admit. People were buying them too. Little kids walked away cupping their hands tightly together, lest their little gift escape. Where are y'all putting these chicks in this big crowded, wintery city of ours? In the backyard?

Ah, but I wanted one. I would name him Noah, and he could hide under my pillow until Chris discovered his cheepy cheepys. Then I would convince him to let Noah live out his days on our patio. No one need know. Chickens, after all, don't need a license.

Teeming Masses of Humanity

We wandered into a street festival on Friday afternoon. Cotton candy, bunny ears, dancing concubines, Chinese opera, scorpions on a stick.... this place had it all. We actually just walked from one end of the street to the other. That was all we did. But BOY was it fascinating.

Did you think I was kidding about the scorpions?

Forbidden Starbucks?

There has been much uproar surrounding a little store in Beijing. A famous CCTV show host has let it be known that the presence of Starbucks within the Forbidden City - yes, inside the sacred walls - is something akin to colonization. He has amassed quite a following, and there is much talk around here about whether Starbucks should be allowed to operate at this location.

Today we took some peeps to the site in question because, well, everybody's gotta see it at least once. Of course, buying a tall macchiato was the first order of business. We barely found the coffee shop. It has absolutely no signs out front, and we had to peer inside some dim windows to see if the logos on the cups were indeed round and green. Last time we were at the Forbidden City, I swear there was a small, nondescript Starbucks sign, but it has since been removed. Once inside, I was thwarted from taking a picture (probably because of all the recent hullabaloo). When we exited, macchiatos in hand, several people stopped us to ask where we got the coffee.

If anything at all is allowed to be sold inside the Forbidden City, then why not Starbucks? Is a cup of western coffee more of an affront to the sanctity of this location than all of the cheap postcards and T-shirts saying the Chinese equivalent of "I HEART Beijing"? I actually do agree that it is somewhat demeaning to be selling things inside what was the center of Chinese government (and some would argue society) from 1406 to 1911. But if you say stop selling Starbucks, then you have to say stop selling everything. It is all inappropriate - no one item more than another.

Just so I don't appear to be a culturally insensitive boob with this post, I leave you with some other pictures of the visit. And I promise, no western imperialist beverages were drunk anywhere NEAR these guys.

The Great Butt Crack of China

Alternate title: Adventures at the MuTianYu section of the Great Wall.


I have lived here for a year and a half and this still cracks me up, every time.

Chun Jie Kuai Le!

Happy Spring Festival! Today is the first day of the Golden Pig year. A very auspicious year indeed.



Last night was crazy. We live in a suburban area of Beijing which has lots of open space for lighting of fireworks, so we saw quite the display. The booms echoed all night long, with a creschendo at midnight. Even now, at 9 a.m., fireworks are still going off in the distance.

Our plans to have dinner with friends fell through at the last minute, so we went off to have food by ourselves. We found a fabulous vegetarian restaurant next to a nearby lake. Not only was the food great, but we also had explosions of color going off above the restaurant all throughout the meal.

Chris and I set off some small fireworks - kids fireworks really - after dinner. Then the whole restaurant came outside and lit off *their* fireworks. Big huge boxes that sent up explosions of sparkles and light. Next door, a group of kids were setting off their own, smaller fireworks - bottle rockets and sparkly showers and hovering UFO spinners. Have you ever seen a four year old lighting a firework before? It was really crazy. I have a strange sense of detatchment here. If saw a bunch of kids in the States lighting fireworks, I probably would have called child services. But here... it is normal. Just like not wearing seatbelts in the back of taxis. After a while, you just stop looking.

This is a Chinese Zodiac hanging that is now diplayed on the inside of our front door. I bought it in some hotel shop in Xian while on a business trip. It is actually quite funny that this hanging came from such a cheesy place because I really like the handwork. It has a very folk art feel. Chris said that it reminds him of "Dia de Los Muertos" art, and I think he is right.

731 - War Crimes

During our trip to Harbin last weekend, we spent a morning visiting the 731 Museum just outside of town. Many people have not heard much about what happened in China during World War II. While every American child knows about the Holocaust, the rape of Nanking and other horrors do not get much mention in textbooks.

Sometime around 1931, the Japanese imperial army established an outpost in occupied Manchuria called Unit 731. From what people have been able to piece together, this Unit was charged with performing experiments on humans in order to better understand germ warfare. They infected people with bubonic plague, typhoid, cholera, and yellow fever under different conditions so they could see how fast they got sick. People were put in vacuum chambers and watched to see at what pressure they would explode. People were intentionally shot in the head and then immediately operated on to see if anything could be done to save their life. People's extremities were frozen and then placed in baths of water to see what temperature was best for preventing frostbite.

As we learned all of this, I kept thinking about how astounding it was that humans did these things to other humans. The only explanation is that the Japanese solders did not view their prisoners as humans at all. They must have seen them as subhuman. In fact, records show that they did not use names for the prisoners, instead using the Japanese word for wood: maruta.

Historians estimate that between 3,000 and 10,000 people died in this facility outside of Harbin before the war ended. Approximately 300,000 more people died throughout China from bubonic plague, typhoid, cholera and yellow fever (sound familiar?) contracted from eating or using intentionally contaminated food supplies dropped from airplanes. When the Japanese surrendered in 1945, Unit 731 evacuated and blew up the building, destroying much of the evidence. The doctors at this unit were never prosecuted. Ever. Some were still teaching at Medical Universities in Tokyo in the 1990s.

Chris and I had a hard time walking through this museum. It was sickening. In fact, Chris really doesn't ever want to visit something like this again. We are planning to go to Ho Chi Minh city in May, and he really does not want to see the war museums - just too hard to contemplate all of that sadness.

I think, however, that we have to see it, have to talk about it. After all, not many people know this happened at all. Did you know? Why didn't we know?



This is a picture of the crater where the central lab building of the 731 complex once stood. A big, vast, frozen crater where thousands of people, not maruta, were systematically tortured and executed. I hope we talk about this until everyone on earth knows what happened.

My Craft is On (again)

February's theme: Hearts.


Miss Konichi has some lovely threads (So punny! har har).

On Tipping, Culture and Supremacy of the American Dollar

This post was inspired by some comments made one of my favorite authors in the blogosphere, whom I respect very much. The issue at hand and the subject of my musings is this: When (if ever) is it appropriate to tip in China? If you do tip, then how much? In dollars or in renminbi (RMB)? Before I spew forth on this issue, let me say that my interest is quite academic. I don’t really care if you are a tipper in general or not a tipper, if you are a cheap bastard or a benevolent philanthropist. I am more interested in the following questions:

- Why do different cultures have different ideas on tipping, what is appropriate, how it is done?
- What factors influence peoples’ decision making on tipping?
- How does culturally “different” tipping behavior impact the people involved, in the short term and in the long term.
- How do people’s assumptions regarding “correct behavior” evolve as economies change?

Let me also say that I am an economist by training, not an anthropologist or sociologist. So my perspective is definitely influenced by my profession. Finally, I do live in China right now, but that in no way makes me an expert on Chinese culture. As a third culture kid, I am probably not an expert on U.S. culture either.

Tipping in China

Generally speaking, there is no tipping in China. When I say there is no tipping, I mean that Chinese people usually do not do it. When you go to a restaurant, people pay the price on the menu, nothing more. In taxis, people pay the fare on the meter, nothing more. If one were to dine at an everyday Chinese restaurant and then leave a 20% tip, the staff people would either 1) try to give it back, 2) think you are less of a person for wasting your money, or 3) both. Note that this doesn’t apply to fancy foreign restaurants in Shanghai or Beijing, which operate on completely different norms altogether.

Chinese in general, and Shanghaiese in particular, are very frugal people. Personal savings rate statistics, by some estimates as high as 30% of disposable income, show that people in China do not part with money flippantly. As our Shanghai ayi would say, “Why buy bread in the morning when you know it always goes on sale at 6 p.m.?”This is may be one of the root reasons why tipping is not widespread here. Many people in China really value transparency in economic transactions. We bargain and decide on a price. It is what it is, nothing more. The contract is clear and everyone walks away with what they expected. Tipping, however, adds an element of uncertaintly to a transaction. After all, why would someone pay you extra if they didn't have to? If you could not trust them to pay out of benevolence, then why not just agree upon a fair price to begin with?

In contrast, tipping elsewhere in the world, such as in the United States, is often influenced by different norms. “Normal” restaurant tipping in the United States means leaving 10-20% of the bill for the server. If you leave less than that, then the server is often insulted. In addition, as minimum wage laws in the United States usually have exceptions for restaurant servers, these people really do depend on tips as part of their wages. That is, U.S. social norms regarding acceptable tipping behavior are so strong that they are codified into law.

When it comes to tipping, countries in Europe often operate somewhere in between these two extremes. Proper behavior in London when riding in a cab is to round your fare up to the nearest pound. In Germany, it is customary to leave 5% or so extra as a thank you for the server. Why not 20%? Well, one reason for this is that servers in Germany receive a fair wage without tips (by law). So customers do not feel obligated to leave more; they do not feel that they are impoverishing, taking advantage of or punishing the server with only a 5% tip. In addition, a service charge is often built into the price on the menu.

So, what then is right? How do we behave in different situations? Well, it is easy if you are German and in Germany – you will tip in accordance with established social norms, as will someone in China or the United States. But what do you do when you are outside of your comfort zone, say a China traveler dining in Italy? Clearly we see people behaving in both ways – complying with local tipping norms or adhering to the norms of the home culture (for better or for worse).

Now comes the tricky question. How does people’s behavior change in the following specific circumstance. The traveler in question is 1) visiting a location where tipping norms are different from home and 2) they are more wealthy (say just relatively speaking) than the server in question. What happens then? Is income disparity enough, in other words, to influence decisions regarding what is “right”?

Adoption Tours and Tipping Norms

For those of you not so familiar with the China adoption paradigm, most foreign adopting parents take a trip to China to pick up their child. They almost always do so through an arranged tour managed by their adoption agency back home. When on the tours from America, apparently it is an established norm for people to at least tip the guide and the bus driver and perhaps to tip everyone they see (not sure). The stated argument for doing so is that *tips form an essential part of these people’s income* so not doing so is effectively depriving them of their market-based wages.

If we know that, in general, there is no tipping in China, then is this argument plausible? My answer is, well, perhaps. Imagine with me the following scenario.

Year 1 of adoption tours to China (say 1995 or so) – Entrepreneurial tour operator sees opportunity to develop service package for visiting Americans. Hires bus, driver, guide at market rates. All goes well. Tour operator is earning a routine return on his investment.

Year 2 – Tour operator notices that tour guide and bus driver have new houses. Investigates and discovers that the American tourists are providing the employees with tips which increase the employees’ wages from a market rate to above market rate. Tour operator goes to employees and says that their salaries will be decreased as it is only “fair” for the tour operator to reap some or all of the tip revenue. Employees accept the salary decrease because they have no second best alternative. Employees are now earning the same amount as at the beginning of Year 1. The only difference is that now they are indeed dependent on the tips of the tourists to survive. The only catch is that the benefit of the tips ultimately ends up with the entrepreneur.

Years 3 and beyond - More and more entrepreneurs enter the market and the returns of all players eventually go to zero economic profit (i.e., everyone earns only a normal, routine accounting profit).

The question is this – if the first busload of American tourists knew what would happen, would they have tipped? If we revisit my original question about how perceptions of income disparity influence our decisions about tipping behavior, I would guess yes – even if, followed to its rational conclusion, the tip would result in no net improvement in circumstance for the recipient.

Since I have been rather long winded on this post, I will save the remainder of my thoughts for next time. Part two will focus on the persistent idea that Chinese people prefer to receive American dollars over RMB in tips. Preview here.

Great Hall of the People, y'all

Only in China would you receive a spontaneous invitation to go see a concert and realize at the very last minute that the performance is being held in the Great Hall of the People! This is where the People's Congress meets, where affairs of state are held, where.... well gosh. It is like going to see a symphony orchestra perform in the US Congress building. Check out the ceiling of the main hall.



Now the performance was crap - some visiting Western orchestra whose members should have retired long ago. But I...was...in...the...GREAT HALL.

For those of you who were wondering, refreshments at the Great Hall performance consisted of a water dispenser and dixie cups. But you know, it was exactly what I wanted.


But the best thing of all, and I am not making this up, was hearing the visiting laowai orchestra play James Bond theme music...in the Great Hall. Fabulous irony.

Where were we?

Can you guess where Chris and I went this weekend? One hint - it was reeeaaaly cold. OK, here is another hint.



Did you guess Harbin (pronounced "Har" as in "Jar" and "Bin" as in "Bean")? Yup, we flew to north China on Friday to meet some of our friends for the snow festival. This was a non-stop trip packed with tons of sightseeing. It was definitely a good time, although the peeps in town have learned the word "tip" and use it constantly. As in, "Will you be giving me a tip? How much tip? Don't forget my tip!"

These pictures are from the largest ice park in town, which features life-size buildings and statues all carved out of ice dragged in from the river. Lights are embedded into the ice blocks, so the huge park is awash with colored lights by night. It was so bright that we could see it from our hotel.




Later this week, I hope to write more about the Siberian tiger park and 731 museum, but I am off now to drink a glass of wine and soothe my windburned cheeks.

Raggedy Ann Rice

Prototype #2 for the Beijing Rag Doll Workshop. I like this one. Very sweet.

Have y'all noticed that Chris names all the dolls and stuffed animals I make? Immediately after they are born, the naming.