Stereotypes for Provinces. Archetypes for Rapscallions.

21 Dec 2019
People keep telling me stories about national character.

Sam and I have a project to travel to every province of China and potter around for a few days, looking at some things, communicating in Putonghua, meeting strangers. Creating a narrative and sensory map of the country. With the new High Speed Rail and Multiple Entry Visas, it should be a cinch. Update: it's not a cinch. We have a bit of a Covid-19 epidemic and we can't go anywhere for quite some time.

As I tell people about these plans, they (people from the Mainland) start telling me what types of characters I'm going to find there. (People from HK tell me I should just go to Taiwan). At first I thought it was like the Sydney-Melbourne issue. You know what they say. "If you put on a theatre show in Sydney, no one will go, and they'll tell you you are fabulous, if you put on a show in Melbourne, everyone will go, and they'll tell you it was rubbish".

But I did find that there was a consistency to the stories. A young woman on the plane to Shanghai told me about her bull-headed region of Hunan and her boyfriend's fiery temper from Szechuan (hot like chilli) meaning they would be fiery together. But they had got together while studying in the UK and were both intent on suppressing their 'natural selves' in order to give a good impression of China to the foreigners. As a result, they tricked each other as well, and got in the habit of being nicer. She thought this may be a good thing, to develop the ability to be considerate in a relationship. Worthwhile losing some authentic natural character. She wasn't sure, but she was considering it.

A colleague from Guangzhou told me before a trip to Wuhan that the area was in a geological 'cauldron' which caused smog and hot weather and as a result the people were aggressive and bullying, but also considered to be wily and smart and the best at passing exams. Whenever an exam analysis book is published in Wuhan, everyone rushes to buy it. (This story may be about Chongqing, I get them mixed, the two Hu - bei and nan).

That's about all I've got for now. Normally I would be disdainful of cultural stereotypes, but at the time I was wondering how ever I could remember the names, locations and other knowledge about every region of China. In HK and Shenzhen, the mix of Chinese people is really multicultural, and I often have students from parts of China I know nothing about and have trouble remembering. So I'm thinking that this caricature/ archetype level of descriptor is like a ready-made cast of rapscallions. I want to do more finding out about how the Chinese talk about each other as I suspect this is an informal technique of teaching and learning national geography. The Chinese are highly politically incorrect when it comes to categorising people. I mentioned the idea to my colleague and he said for sure he can tell me stories about many regions of China. I was thinking we (kids and I) could make a set of chess piece sized rapscallions from clay and get them to stomp around on a map, visiting and interacting.

I'm sure some people think I could just study these regions and learn to remember them, and the thing is, I've had that intention for YEARS. It's not wrong, I'm just too lazy, or rather I just haven't made it important. I'm not too lazy to spend a year or two collecting stories and making little playdough/clay figurines and playing them with the kids. Because that's a daft thing to do and I have endless time for the daft.

This will be faster and cheaper than travelling to every region of China to build a sensory bank. Though that is a super fun project in its own right.

As the area I live in is in the south, there's a good chance I'll need a richer set of stereotypes just for Guangzhou. I have three trips scheduled within the next 4 months. Two day trips with school and one historical site trip at Easter. Going to Hoi Ping (PTH: Kaiping): https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1112/
And here: http://tangkoucommunityproject.com/information/category/128/en
Sam may have a trip to Xi'an with his school in April.

Here's some info on China's regions or 'Administrative divisions':
http://www.chinatoday.com/city/china_autonomous_regions.htm

4 Municipalities, 5 Autonomous Regions, 2 SARs and 23 Provinces.

I'm going to annotate the China Today list with my own experiences of the regions. If there's no note on the region, then I'm totally ignorant and don't even have hearsay knowledge. Or I have it about a town but can't connect that to the province. I'll continue updating this list as I gather stories. I'll also add the Chinese names. They have helpful Mnemonics. I have some wrong concepts in my mind-map of China that get highlighted in this process. For example I think of Szechuan as being more northern and closer to Beijing than it is. I'm inserting a few maps.

I also have a lovely pictorial map picture book with a page for each province/region. Many resources. The trick is to use them.

Sam I'm sure will have his own contribution to the list. He can add it here or copy this list and make his own entry. He's studying Chinese history and the capital(s) of empire have moved all over the shop.

4 Municipalities

• Beijing
• I stayed here for a month in 2002 at an artist residency. Wonderful.
• People here are at the centre of the world and speak PTH with a plum in the mouth and a lot more Rrrr Arr than anyone else in the country. 
• Chongqing
• I know someone who was working here with a division of Merck. It used to be part of Sichuan maybe. 
• Shanghai
• I've visited three times, once with Sam. 
• People here are snobby and won't let you 'in' if you don't learn Shanghainese. The women are unmarriageable, undateable princesses due to their self-esteem. (I do know some Shanghainese people in HK who are utterly fabulous, this is the stereotype). Everyone we got chatting to while visiting was actually from outside Shanghai. Shanghainese people also tend to be classy and aesthetic. 
• Tianjin
• Something something a big lake
• Is Tsingtao beer from here? No, QingDao is in Shandong, a bit south. 
• Fourth largest city in china, 11th in the world. Bloody enormous port city. There was some pandemic drama there a few years ago. Oh no maybe the explosions. Or both. 
• Walled city built in 1404. Now has 'dual centres'. 
• 天津 means heaven ferry/ heavenly ford

23 Provinces

• Anhui
• Where even is it?
• It borders the two Shanghai cuddlers, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. 
• The Yangtze River runs right through the middle. 
• You'd have to cross it to go from Wuhan to Nanjing. 
• Fujian
• It's directly up the coast from GuangDong. It's the mainland closest to Taiwan and the native Taiwanese language is related to Fujianese. I think. 
• Gansu
• It cuddles Inner Mongolia to the west. It's the only province that touches 3 autonomous regions. 
• Paleolithic times. Stone carving art.
• Zhou dynasty
• River basins - Jin, Wei and Yellow Rivers
• East-West trade, 
• Monk Xuan Zang of Tang went to India to learn Buddhism.
• Goldenhaired MonkeyHequ horse
• MoGao Grottos with murals
• Lanzhou is capital
• Guangdong
• Closest to HK, I've visited Guangzhou city in 1997 with Noah M., and Sam has visited some place associated with the opium war. I'm next visiting on 3 Jan on a twin-school visit. 
• Hoi Ping - I am planning a field trip with the wonderful Pat Hase and my extended family of nerds over the Easter break. 
• Two SEZs (Special Economic Zones) - These areas are not at all Guangdong anymore. No one speaks Guangdonghua, they are from all over and so PTH is the lingua franca. 
• Shenzhen - I've only been to the LuWu Shopping mall to find seamstresses. Many of my students live there and commute to school. 
• Zhuhai - It's Macau's SEZ. People go there to stay in resorts. Next PTA trip on 11th Jan will be my first visit. 
• Guizhou
• It's Xi of Guang Xi and Nan of Hunan. 
• Mountains and rivers all over
• Braised Salamander?
• Sparkly stone
• Hainan
• Keon and I took a special deal off-season discount package tour here early in our relationship, maybe 2004? And stayed at the Cactus resort. It was real Cactus. 
• There were a lot of Russians and Russian restaurants. 
• There was a group-trip of young men in the resort, in their 20s I think, who would giggle and squeal and run up and down the corridors at night like 12 year olds. Drunk 12 year olds. And some people, one has to imagine the same, were drying their hand-washed tighty-not-so-whitey y-fronts by hanging them in the cactuses in the rock gardens by the pool. 
• I'm sure there's more to Hainan, but it will always be y-fronts in the cactus at the Cactus to me.
• Oh, and pearl-sellers on the beach.
• Hebei
• It cuddles Beijing and TianJin
• Heilongjiang
• It has such a lovely name. It's up in the mysterious north. The capital is Harbin and they do the Ice Sculpture festival up there. They make you drink too much. 
• Henan
• It's south of Hebei. But north of Hubei. Between two beys. 
• Hubei
• It's north of Hunan. Plonk in the middle of China. I visited Wuhan in June 2019 to see Lisa play with the Baroque Orchestra. Fabulous. Wrote terrible calligraphy in the Yellow Crane Tower. 200 years ago I'd have been drowned in the river for such aesthetic atrocity but these days people think it's cute. 
• The people here are known to be boiling like a cauldron, aggressive, bullying and sly; the smog is heavy and foul. A very grey place with some fabulous green parks. 
• Hunan
• South of Hubei. The place the musos were going next and the hometown of the girl I met on the plane to shanghai when the flight was delayed and we had hours to chat. I'm not sure if the sly thing is actually Hunan or Hubei. The beautiful ink painting of mountains and the XiangJiang river are from Hunan. I think. 
• Jiangsu
• It's just north of Shanghai. 
• YeungChau Fried rice is named after a town on the coast. 
• Nanjing is there.
• Suzhou is there. IM Pei built a beautiful art history museum. 
• The guy we met in the queue was from there and told us to visit. 
• Jiangxi
• It sits on the head of GuangDong. touches Hunan and Fujian either side. 
• Jilin
• Touches Korean, Harbin, and the Liao place
• Liaoning
• It's near North Korea
• Qinghai
• It's very large and quite in the middle. The donut hole. 
• Shaanxi
• Xi'an is the capital. Sam may visit here. (I just redirected this note from Shanxi. Aiyah!) It's to the Xi of ShanXi. 
• Shandong
• Up in the north, south of Beijing, close to Sichuan. When I was in Beijing in 2002, my PTH tutor was from this province, studying at Tsinghua University. He was the youngest of a large family and was small and weak when he was born, so his father wanted to drown him like a kitten. His mother wouldn't allow it. Once he failed an important primary school exam because he showed up unprepared and without a pencil. He had to wait a whole year to try again to get into high school. He has worked as a teacher but didn't like it, he hoped to qualify with his masters to work in administration. 
• It pokes out into the sea, trying to touch Korea. 
• Shanxi
• It cuddles Beijing to the West. Its brother Shandong is trying to go to Korea. 
• Sichuan
• This is where the chilli's come from that numb your mouth when cooked dry 
• The people from here have fiery tempers.
• Yunnan
• Very South. It touches Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam. 
• Zhejiang
• It cuddles Shanghai from the south. Capital is Hangzhou. I should know more about it, it's a well-known town. Probably a megalopolis more than a town.  
• Taiwan (See Taiwan issue)
• Our partner in rebelliousness. HKers love it as a slower-paced idealised Chinese country. They speak Mandarin but not putonghua and also another dialect. 
• I want to go an do a bike tour or visit hot springs in the South. Only been once, to Taipei to hang out with Anna on her way to New York. One colleague visits at every chance to see lives show of her favourite rock band, May Day. 
• Taiwanese are friendly and live at a slower pace and prioritise happiness over money. 

5 Autonomous Regions

• Guangxi
• It's right next door to GuangDong. I don't know why it's an autonomous region. 
• Inner Mongolia
• Something about natural resources and forests being deplete or regrown
• Ningxia
• Are the Hui people from there? It's where the Yellow river leaves Inner Mongolia. 
• Tibet
• The Dali Lama, The Chinese Lama, The stories of Tibetan kids being told to only speak PTH at school. My students see it as a place to visit for natural and spiritual tourism. 
• Xinjiang
• The horror. 

2 Special Administrative Regions (SAR)

• Hong Kong
• I live here.
• Macao (Macau)
• Our neighbour, many visits. The 2D church, the Catholic cemetery full of GuanYam statues, death-mask photos and that time I saw a man on the church roof washing (7 year old?) skeletons, 
• Fernando's Restaurant on Taipa, and Stanley Ho and Casinos. 
• People speak Cantonese and bloomin Portuguese. So it's the first place I found my Cantonese to be vitally important. The difference between my visits before and after my 3 month course in 1997 was so palpable I've never forgotten. Strangers started to shake their heads and run away, then they stopped and gave me directions. 
• People there comply with Beijing's demands and Mainlander crims go there to wash their money in the casinos. 

Finally, I notice that this project lacks linearity or narrative. It may need some kind of tour around the country that links each rapscallion-province to the next, either by location, land area or population. 

That's all for now one this one! 

5 March 2020
Update: Today Kalamata made me a set of distinctive 'rapscallion stones' and Sam and I placed them on the map and made up reasons why. Turns out we have some up with 16/32 regions! So impressive! We started from the easiest. Places we had some idea about.

She made the 2 SARs, the 5 Autonomous Regions and 7 of the 23 Provinces. We used some amber beads for the 4 Municipalities. (I had considered using all amber, but I was too chicken. I don't think my spacial awareness is good enough).
16 more Provinces to go. Kalamata put a lot of work into the objects and she got tired, she's promised to do the rest next week.

This is so satisfying. After placing them on their regions, we talked about them as we took them off. Then talked them back on again. After dinner, I asked K what the 4 (Amber bead) municipalities were. She couldn't remember the names, but she remembered the stories. One is a chilli, one is a fashionable bow tie one is a fancy pyramid of capital, and one cuddles a lake.

It works! I was so happy, I just spent some time adding more info the the list above. It looks like we've learnt enough provinces to be able to orient the others by what they border. Now we need to use spaced repetition to keep it in there.

The map is from a big map book that has a page for each region. (Including Taiwan, ahem). It's all in Chinese so the kids will have to help me out. Our naming of regions is a mix of English, Mandarin and Cantonese versions.

Cheers, Tanya