Does Everyone Spit in China?

The real question is why don't people spit more elsewhere. Different places have different customs. What is considered rude in one country is just a matter of course in another. Yes, people spit in China. If you come from a country where it's considered rude to spit, it might seem to you that they spit “a lot”. Yes, occasionally I see someone spit. But it's not like everyone's hawking loogies left and right.

Everyday situations, like a person spitting on the street, may seem easy to understand, but everything has a huge amount of history to it. To oversimplify things, there has always been a lot of poverty in China. Historically, most people have always just scraped by. That long history of poverty translates into a culture that is largely devoid of certain pleasantries – because “high culture” (read: a snotty sense of superiority) is a luxury of the wealthy. Only they have the time to worry about whether or not someone is being polite. Everyone else has more important things to think about.

But that also means there isn't the kind of institutional anxiety that we have in the West. You're not constantly worried about offending someone, because the rules of etiquette are pretty straightforward. That is not to say that there is no etiquette in China. Etiquette does matter – but with friends, with family, with co-workers and business partners. Etiquette consists of specific rules of behavior in specific social situations. In the West, the moment you step outside your door, you're in society. It doesn't matter that you don't know anyone, nor that you're not doing anything special. There's still this imaginary force always watching you, always making sure that you're doing things right. “Does that person think I snubbed him? Oh god, I bumped into that girl. I hope she knew it was an accident. Why is he staring at me? What's his problem?” And so on.

There's this imaginary body called “society” and whenever we're in it, we're orienting ourselves by it. It doesn't matter if you're insecure or confident. Either way, you're omni-conscious of society to the point of obsession.

This deserves a brief caveat. I think a lot of this is true, though it may not sound right. The difficult part (for me) is to place exactly where it is true, and for what level of abstraction. I can't say for certain if this difference of societal awareness is essential to the West, or to America, or to Southern California, or to suburbia, or what. It's tough to place – my experience is too limited to know exactly where the difference lies. But it is undeniably there.

Maybe it's just me, and the fact that I want so dearly to be indifferent to capital-S Society. But since I've been in Beijing, the little anxieties that haunt me back home have altogether disappeared. People stare at me every single day. They shove past me on the subway, completely oblivious to whether or not I'm taking offense. People spit, and litter, and jaywalk with impunity. Thank god for all of it. However the little things might irritate me from time to time, it is a blessing to be around people who aren't constantly concerned about appearances, about impressing the invisible Other, about pretending to be something they're not. All that inspires me to do just the same. Maybe that's rude. Or maybe it's just real.

Inspiration: My Father's Influence

Ever since I can remember I have heard stories about my father's travels around the worold. I've looked up to him for my whole life, as a son is prone to do with his father. As time has passed, the desire to emulate him has never left me. The fire of my father-worship, coupled with his countless small words of encouragement, has left me today with an inferno burning in my chest to become as great as I have perceived him to be.
But though a father is always a man, the father itself is a myth. He is a Hercules fallen from heavens, a towering beast and bona fide force of nature. He cannot be stopped by any living force, but is instead moved, as though unmoved, from within. And throughout it all, he is a myth borne alone from the wonder of a child's eyes. As I grew older I had to learn that he did not really exist. I had a father, yes. But he was no god.

Despite all this, there is no undoing the motions instilled in us from the time we are children. Myths may be unsubstantiated by facts, but that makes them no less real. There is an undeniable power possessed by myths, and this power is not false even if the stories themselves are utter fabrications.

I know full well the depth and complexity of the person my father truly is. I know that while his stories of travel and adventure sound romantic, that they contain a dark underbelly. Every time he went off on another adventure, he left people behind. And every ounce of his spirit that he lent to the whimsical pursuit of pleasure was an ounce stolen from those he loved and cared for.

But he is my father, and nothing will ever topple the place he has in my heart and mind. No Titan can topple the god that is Father from Olympus, for the material of myth is not fact but hope. He may not have been the best man, but he will always be my greatest inspiration.

So here I am, out in the world, far, far from home. I console myself with the knowledge that I am not repeating his mistakes, but making my own. I have hurt no one by forging off on this new path of mine. Everything that he has done wrong, I have learned not to repeat.

Thus I am just the same as every other person on this earth. I want to have my cake and eat it too. For my father is a singular creature. Everything that has gone into him and come out again has, by way of the pressure-cooker of time, been tangled and bound up together into an inscrutable mass. To wish to take only from the good while discarding all of the bad is like trying to separate the white from the yolk of an egg once it has been scrambled.

But by the same token, it is just as impossible to separate the heart of man from his destiny. I can no sooner deny the influence of my father than I can sever off my own foot with indifference. Because I too am a singular creature, cooked into an indistinguishable molten mass through fires of time. I am the egg that has been scrambled beyond hope of separation.

And so I turn myself over to destiny, and pray that it makes me well. I can do nothing less.