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 | | From: | ggg | | Subject: | Article busting Some Kind of Expat: That's not sunshine shooting | | Date: | Sat, 04 Dec 2004 17:37:58 GMT |
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I've been lucky to have only known excellent expatriates smart and in
touch with what's really happening in their city (maybe they're all
spies!) but I know exactly the kind of people this article is about
because I walk away (and get on a bus) to avoid them:
Too far from home
Justin Mitchell
Weekend: December 4-5, 2004
REUTERS
"Excuse me for asking this, but why are so many foreigners here
losers?'' a Shenzhen friend asked me recently. The topic had arisen
following an altercation with a taxi driver who had screamed invective
at me in Chinese after a difference of opinion concerning his seemingly
random route to our otherwise direct destination.
I replied to the driver in kind, in English, and after the smoke cleared
I asked my companion what the cabbie had been screaming.
Bracing myself for something like ``Son of a turtle egg!'', she
surprised me by saying he'd insulted me by questioning my patriotism.
``He said you betrayed your motherland by coming to live here.''
I briefly wondered how he knew I'd voted for John Kerry, but our
conversation returned to what makes expats tick and why so many seem,
well, just a little strange.
``Losers? Whatever do you mean?'' I replied, quickly suppressing
memories of the two ex-wives, the one-room apartment in Methcrackville
and the wheezing rustbucket 1981 Honda that I had abandoned in the
United States.
I knew exactly what she meant. While most of the expats I've encountered
in Shenzhen and Hong Kong seem to be fairly grounded, there are others
for whom a phrase recalled from my fifth-grade report card, ``Is a
distraction to others'', fits nicely.
Three who turned up at the newsroom with ``exclusives'' for the
English-language Shenzhen paper where I once toiled came immediately to
mind.
One was a prematurely balding late 20-ish Canadian English teacher with
a potbelly, Lord of the Rings T-shirt and slightly soiled khaki slacks.
He wanted to reform China's mostly abysmal sanitation systems and
Shenzhen's traffic nightmare. His 193-page, single-spaced tome was the key.
Another was an American doctor in his late 50s who said he worked a
couple of times a month in Guangzhou and at other hospitals in southern
China. He was neatly groomed, wore grey slacks, a light-tan sport coat,
white shirt and blue tie and told an editor that he had been shocked to
discover that nurses in Chinese hospitals weren't always what they
claimed to be. Though all wore nurses' uniforms, some had only high
school educations. Some of the drugs were counterfeit and some of the
doctors were also counterfeit.
It was a good story, perhaps, until he also revealed that the Queen of
England was conspiring with the Chinese authorities to have him replaced
by a double, cloned from a scrap of skin tissue that his Singaporean
ex-wife scraped off him 20 years earlier during a ``misunderstanding''.
The third was a lanky, barely 20s British English teacher with a stringy
ponytail and a handful of photos he'd taken of UFOs over Shenzhen.
``Shenzhen is at a cosmic universal crossroads and these pictures prove
it!'' he'd blurted out. How he could shoot them through the constant
smog and haze was a greater mystery to me, but I kept my mouth shut.
All found their way up 37 floors to the inner sanctum of the Shenzhen
Daily with their revelations. They all also had the seemingly requisite
silent, obedient-looking Chinese wives/girlfriends trailing behind and
sitting quietly and patiently in spare office chairs for hours as their
menfolk unfolded their revelations. The guys all had the 1,000-metre
stare of someone not quite comfortable with reality as most of us know it.
I mostly avoided them as the only other foreigner they saw during their
visits to the office, although the Chinese reporters and editors were
unerringly polite and patient with these deluded expats seeking an
outlet for their stories.
The doctor and the UFO expert spent a lot of time bending the ear of the
paper's third-in-command who, despite the fact that he understood
perhaps only 40 per cent of what they said, kept nodding and clearing
his throat in seeming agreement until they'd made their case, collected
their female arm candy and left.
The Canadian was more persistent. He buttonholed anyone within sight
with multiple copies of his ``One Canadian's Cure for China's Ills''
manifesto and dropped one on my desk as he left, just in case. Among
other things, I was shocked to learn that some Chinese don't wash their
dirty dishes with boiled water.
And there was another fellow I'd run into at a press conference at a
posh Shenzhen hotel for the premier of a 2004 movie Baober in Love. Our
paths had crossed several times before and he'd once tried to sell me on
a pyramid sales operation involving nutrients that he swore would be
huge in China.
We greeted each other upon arriving at the press conference and when the
questions to the stars began I saw him edge forward - wearing wraparound
shades - with a Chinese woman who was translating for him.
I followed just to see what he had in mind. I heard him ask his
translator if anyone in the cast spoke English. She said she didn't know.
Finally there was a lull in the questions from the Chinese press and the
expat spoke up in English.
``I'm a film producer from LA! Los Angeles! In California, USA.
Hollywood!'' he proclaimed.
A Chinese reporter who'd also had previous encounters with this fellow
looked shocked. ``What? He is?''
I shrugged and didn't know whether to laugh or leave immediately. As far
as I could discern, the closest he'd come to Hollywood might have been
pushing Junior Mints in a Burbank multiplex.
The cast and director looked at him quizzically. If the ``producer'' was
disappointed for not receiving gasps of recognition, he didn't let it show.
``Do you speak English?'' he asked one of the male leads.
The actor looked at him evenly and said: ``Yes, I do. A little.''
``Good! Good!'' he said, pressing on. ``I am a Hollywood producer and we
want to make a film in China and we are looking for actors.''
He focused on the female star, Zhou Xun, and smiled. ``Do you? Speak
English?''
``No,'' she said.
For the first time the Hollywood movie maven looked crestfallen. ``No?
None?''
Zhou lifted her right hand and made an extremely small space between her
thumb and index finger. ``Very little,'' she said.
``Well, maybe we can use you, anyway,'' Shenzhen's Steven Spielberg
blustered. Imagine some Chinese loonball interrupting a Hollywood press
conference with Nicole Kidman to say he might be able to use her in a
Hong Kong chop-socky flick and you get the general idea of the kind of
impression he was making.
But instead of unleashing security goons, the assembled celebs just kept
staring at Mr Hollywood. I wanted to die, apologising on behalf of my
country.
The deluded expat turned back to a male actor, Chen Kun, and said:
``Would you like to be in my movie?''
Chen smiled patiently, said something in Chinese and pointed to a woman
standing at the other end of the table.
``What did he say?'' the expat asked his translator.
``He said you have to talk to his agent,'' she replied. ``That is her.''
A very Hollywood answer.
The simple answer to my Shenzhen friend's question, I suppose, is that
folks like Mr Showbiz, Dr Clone, the Space Oddity and China's Canadian
Saviour couldn't make it, never mind be taken seriously, on their home
turf. So I turned to her with a confession.
``You know, I'm not really a journalist.''
``You're not?''
``No, I'm actually here undercover conducting top-secret research for a
joint US-Sino cancer vaccine extracted from randomly selected beers in
Chinese bars. Very hush-hush and difficult to explain in simple terms.
Just trust me on this.''
``Just as long as you are true to your motherland, I will ask nothing
more,'' she replied, smiling.
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