The Cosmopolitan World of 21st Century China

My senior seminar course back in college was a study of cosmopolitanism in Tang Dynasty China. The Tang was an exciting time in China. The capital at Chang'an (present day Xi'an) was an orderly, walled city of about 1 million people, with another million in the surrounding farmlands. Imperial control encompassed most of China's modern borders. There was steady and brisk trade with foreign lands along the Silk Road, which meandered through oasis cities and mountain passes from Xi'an to Damascus. Followers of Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and even Nestorian Christianity could be found within the empire. Artists and artisans produced an abundance of figurines, scrolls, sancai (three-color) ceramics, and gorgeous textiles of dizzying complexity. Yang Guifei made "pleasantly plump" the standard of feminine beauty (at least until the emperor regretfully had her strangled, but that's a long story). If I ever get my hands on a time machine (Delorean, blue police box, or stolen Klingon warship model, I'm not picky), you can bet I will be visiting Tang China.

But, truly, I don't need a time machine to explore cosmopolitan China. I already live there. We can argue about the definition and criteria of cosmopolitanism, but here are my facts. Last night in Guangzhou, I went to a Japanese restaurant to celebrate a Canadian's birthday and sat next to a Mexican and a German. Also in attendance were a couple Brits, a South African, and an Australian, and Americans of Chinese, Polish, Irish, African, and French descent. Between us, we could speak 9 languages (that I know of). It was a lovely, relatively normal night.

Then, today, after spending a morning bleaching my walls in the hope of retarding further horrifying mold growth (This humidity is insane. My walls are turning green.), I took the bus over to Tianhe to run some errands (like buying new socks, because although I washed mine three days ago, they are not drying). Coming out the shopping center, I spotted a pair of foreigners flipping through a guidebook with a confused looking Chinese person standing with them. I fiddled with my headphones for a moment, then took a step closer and asked if they needed help. I glanced at the guidebook -- it was written in something Cyrillic. We proceeded to communicate in fluent English. As it turns out, they were looking for the place where you can see "cats and dogs for sale to eat." According to tourist guidebooks, that's Qingping market, but I've never been there (having absolutely no desire to see if it's true -- if I want to see a live animal in a tiny cage waiting to be butchered, I can just go to my local wet market and visit the chickens and toads). I relayed this to the Chinese man, whose response was basically, oh, I know where that is, but it's just traditional Chinese medicine (probably mostly true, but again, I really have no desire to investigate). Anyway, once he knew exactly what they were looking for, he was able to help them with directions from their hotel to the market. I wished them luck and went on my way. Just another multilingual, multinational encounter in the cosmopolitan city.

Of course, cosmopolitanism is more than language and national origin. It's art and music and fashion. Perhaps in a large part, to me, it is a degree of openness. It's a willingness to communicate and participate in meaningful exchange. China, as a nation, isn't known for its willingness to communicate. But then again, neither is the United States. Anyway, I have a feeling that cosmopolitanism might exist and be meaningful on a more personal level. And on the level of individuals, I think China is extremely willing and ready to participate in the worldwide conversation.

 This post has gotten a bit high-minded and far exceeded the scope of my ability to speak with confidence, so one last story from last night and I will leave you in peace. I think I've mentioned before the living-in-a-foreign-land language ranking game that my compatriots and I play whenever we go out. It's not really a game. This is how it works. Let's say you, me, and a couple of our fellow ex-pat friends are out and about, and we encounter a situation where we need to speak Chinese with a person who does not speak English (another point to Guangzhou's cosmopolitanism: this situation is relatively rare). The first thing you do is assess everyone in the group for language ability. Then, you look expectantly at the person judged to be the best Chinese speaker. If you're lucky, you're hanging out with a local coworker, who is obviously fluent. Next best scenario, you're hanging out with a foreigner of Chinese descent who happens to speak Chinese. Third case, you're with an ex-pat who has been here a long time and picked up a lot of functional language. Last option, you look around and realize you're the ranking language expert with your academic Chinese. Alas. Time to step up to the plate. Anyway, last night, in our large party (there were 18 of us), we had no major issues. Ordering was mostly a pointing game (yay pictures!), and I swear every foreigner who's been here a week can say "一瓶啤酒" (a bottle of beer). Regardless, we had a Chinese-American Mandarin speaker and a Chinese-Canadian Cantonese speaker so we were set. Our Mandarin speaking friend had to leave early, and then the waitress came over to ask us something/tell us something. She immediately gravitated to our Canadian Cantonese speaker. Alas, she speaks Mandarin, and he does not. It was mildly amusing, actually, because she was very incredulous. At this point, I scanned the group and went "oh, crap. Does anyone else here speak Mandarin?" Luckily, there was someone who spoke better (or equal) situational Mandarin than me, and between us, we managed to communicate (FYI, it was last call). It was quite amusing, though, the image of two foreigners explaining in Mandarin Chinese that their ethnically Chinese friend really couldn't understand her. Cosmopolitanism, indeed.