Fuwuyuan

Another observation mainly made in restaurants, but it’s the same in a lot of shops, hotels, bars and even a place like the gym. Not that I go to the gym, but I did take a look there, cause a lot of Chinese people see this as a new modern thing, and the gym promoters have given me about 10 flyers of the two competing gyms this city has.

When I enter a restaurant in China, at the door there is usually one, two, or even a line of waitresses standing to open the door for me and to welcome me. The amount of people at the door depends a bit on how expensive the restaurant is and how many guests they have at that moment. This means that if we eat in a more expensive place (for Wuhu/China, this is close to the price of junk food in Amsterdam) and we happen to be the only guests, that it’s not uncommon to be welcomed by a big group of waitresses. This is kind of amusing while at the same time a bit intimidating sometimes.

Somewhere the behavior of the waitresses reminds me a bit of restaurants in America. In America the waiters are very welcoming and friendly but they have to be, because their salary is made out of tips and of course they only get a good tip if they do a good job. In China however there are no tips and I’m sure that if you try to give one they will give back the money. How they do get their salary is a very good question, cause the food and especially the drinks are sold in restaurants for only a few kuai more than the cost price. If I buy a beer in a normal restaurant it will cost me about 5 kuai, which is almost 60 eurocents. This bottle will cost about 4 kuai in the supermarket and I’m sure the restaurants can get it for less, but there’s no need for math to figure out that they earn far less with drinks as the restaurants in Holland do.

This small and amusing restaurant observation leads to the biggest problem China has, and which is the main reason for almost all the other problems this country has to face. Whether it’s pollution, unemployment, poverty, human rights or social unrest, it’s all because of the massive population. Everywhere you go there are people. Too much people. I come from one of the most populated countries in the world, but it feels empty compared to China. Numbers are overrated in my opinion and they are not much more than a indicator. However just to think about, for every Dutch person on this planet there are almost (unofficially 1.5 billion Chinese) a hundred Chinese people. So one Dutch person equals 9 Chinese football teams plus coach. In comparison, one Dutch person would only equal about 20 Americans. Not even two football teams! China is about the same size as the United States, maybe a little bigger.

A normal evening at Nanjing train station.

Paradoxical this population problem is also the cause of the whole China hype, and the main reason why the rapid economic growth is possible. Employment is extremely cheap because there are too much people to do the job, this makes it possible for employers like restaurants to have more staff than guests on some days. This makes service in restaurants in general very good, because the waiters and waitresses have a very high interest in keeping their job and in China there is usually someone to watch them doing their job.

The Boss

My boss is a typical Chinese boss. Except that she’s a woman. Maybe it goes a bit far to generalize her behavior to all Chinese bosses, but she’s the only one I’ve met so far, so it’s not possible for me to compare her with another Chinese boss. Apart from that her position in our office is definitely similar to those of other Chinese bosses. Because it’s absolutely clear who is the boss in our office if she’s there. If you would walk into our office you would immediately point her out, there is just no mistake about her authority. I’ve seen this at other places in China as well, most of the time you can just see it by the clothes. In restaurants you have to be blind not to be able to point out the man in charge. Although he’s not always present, happily enough for the staff.

In our office my boss stands out by her clothes, and its obviously that she has the highest salary. But that’s not all, apart from her clothes her authority is extremely visible. Chinese people don’t bow for their boss, but me colleagues seem to do everything for her without asking any questions whatsoever. Asking questions to people who have a higher position than you is just not done here. The boss doesn’t inform me or my colleagues on most things, and changes in class schedules are usually told to me the evening before. I complained about this to my assistant, but well she’s not able to do anything about this because, the boss is the boss and she is the one who changes the schedule. Happily enough she does not change my schedule that often and it are always minor changes, but she could inform me a bit earlier.

Meanwhile everyone in the office seems to hate her. Ok they don’t hate her, they just don’t like her; “She’s a good person, but you know we just don’t like her.” The first week I was a bit surprised about how disrespectful they talked behind her back. Of course I couldn’t really understand everything because it was in Chinese, but they translated some things for me, and well some things are just easy to guess even if they are said in Chinese. Small jokes about her husband, her business contacts and finally her age. “How old do you think she looks like?” Maybe I’ve never been in a office with almost only woman (except two other guys sometimes) but I haven’t heard this kind of gossips in Holland. Of course in Holland we also talk and sometimes laugh at our boss, but we do this in a much more respectful way, and not really behind his/her back either. It could be that she’s just a special boss, but I think this is quite common in China. I got this idea mainly because I see this strict hierarchy at almost every restaurants I eat.

Finally my boss does not speak English whatsoever, and I can honestly say that my Chinese is already a lot better than her English. (Most of the other colleagues do speak some English.) So if I really need to talk about something seriously I’ll always need my assistant to translate for me, which is not the most ideal situation. Apart from my boss my own position in the office is a bit strange as well. I’m the special teacher in our office because I’m a foreigner and this means that I get a special treatment, which includes half the hours my colleagues work for at least double the salary. Which I’m very glad to receive although this does place me in a rather strange position…

Me with the boss.

Dutch restaurant?

Behind my school’s main office there is a street with all kinds of restaurants and a lot of street food. One of the restaurants has these two characters in the name of the restaurant; 荷兰. You pronounce them as; he lan, which means Holland. (a very small Chinese lesson) My Chinese colleague said it meant something like Dutch barbeque, I really wondered what Dutch barbeque could be, cause I’m quite sure that barbeque came from America. So we decided this would be a nice restaurant to have dinner, together with her husband and two of their friends. Maybe there was some Dutch connection? Another Dutch person in Wuhu? Dutch Cheese maybe?

When we got at the table and I saw the grill which was on our table I understood why it was called Dutch barbeque, or why my colleague said that, that was what it said outside. It looked a lot like a gourmet grill. And although I rarely eat gourmet in Holland, and although it is a France word, it’s a Dutch way of having a more special diner. I understand why she translated it too Dutch barbeque, cause the word Gourmet doesn’t seem to mean the same thing in English as it does in Dutch.

So… did I eat gourmet in China? Well, the grill was the same. After that the similarity ends because well, the Chinese just have a bit different mindset about eating. It’s still strange to me that in a country where most people’s first goal in life, is simply surviving, they value food so much. Ok it sounds obvious that if your first goal is to survive, your first target will be to get some food. But it sometimes feels like there is more food here than there is back home, or at least more variety. Not all their food is that good though, the quality also really varies, but somehow there doesn’t really seem to be correlation with the price.

At this restaurant we started with pork and immediately the hole grill was loaded with meat. There were some onions too but they were definitely a minority at the grill. One of the guys who had been to the restaurant before took the responsibility for the meat, and he turned the meat when it had to be turned and checked if it was ready. Under the grill we also had some really good chicken wings, which took a bit more time. After two rows of pork and the chicken wings it was time for vegetables and finally pieces of octopus with some spicy peppers on them.

The octopus was a bit too spicy in my opinion, even my Chinese colleagues thought it was spicy. Which means that it really was spicy, but apart from that the diner was really good. And I have to say it was a bit better than most gourmets I had in Holland. But the Chinese take their food just a bit more serious than us. I guess there’s some truth in; we (Dutch people, maybe the English as well, definitely not the France or Italians though) eat to live, but the Chinese live to eat.

On a final note, for the people who are wondering if I never miss European food in China. I’ll admit that I do miss normal bread and cheese, especially in the morning. However so far I’ve only been to the McDonalds once and that was, apart from the price a disappointment. In the French supermarket Auchan, they have all kinds of imported food and I had a piece of Dutch cheese in my hands, but when I looked at the price, I saw that it was about twice the Dutch price, and well for that money you can have a really good meal in a restaurant here. Which on its turn would be quite expensive in Amsterdam or anywhere else in Holland.

Stereotypes

In Holland there are a lot of stereotypes about Chinese people. I don’t really want to write about them because some of them might be a bit offending to some of my Chinese readers, and some of the these possible offending stereotypes are true, at least to a certain degree in my opinion. Well, I’m not so long in China yet, so maybe I’ll write about this another time.

Where I do want to write about is the stereotypes Chinese people have about Dutch people, or not really stereotypes about Dutch people, but the things that come to their mind, when I tell them that I’m from Amsterdam. For a lot of Chinese in Wuhu I’ll probably be the first Dutchman they meet, so far I still haven’t met any other Dutch person in Wuhu. I’m still sure that I will, cause Dutch people are everywhere around the world, just like the Chinese. (With a small difference that we don’t open restaurants everywhere.)

So actually this post is just about the (lack of) knowledge Chinese have about my country. Which is actually not so surprising cause I come from a very small country on the planet, and most Dutch people don’t know too much about China either, while China is a very big country. However I wanted to write about this, because on most of my traveling in Europe, and once to the US, people always have the same idea about my country. Especially if I say that I come from Amsterdam… Yep, drugs, weed, red light district and happily enough sometimes they mention great football.

But in China none of these is mentioned. In one month I’ve only spoken to one Chinese guy who mentioned the red light district and that was a tour guide of a big group of western tourist in my hostel in Beijing. In Wuhu however I still haven’t heard it from a Chinese, the other foreigners mentioned it of course. So far the idea most Chinese have about Holland, is a country full of flowers, clumps and windmills. Maybe it’s not so surprising, but for me it’s a bit strange that most Chinese get this idea at school from teachers who most likely never have been in Europe.

I guess it’s a lack of knowledge about my country, or are the Chinese too polite to mention anything which they view as a bad thing, about the place I’m coming from?