Friday, August 27, 2010

Humiliation in Hong Kong

During my year in Hong Kong, I experienced my moment of deepest humiliation at a Watson’s Pharmacy. I sensed it coming as soon as I realized that I’d never find the hemorrhoid cream on my own. Every aisle looked the same, and all the boxes of medicine were printed in Chinese. To make matters worse, I lived out in the New Territories, a spread of hills and suburbs north of Kowloon – an area where the shopkeepers rarely speak English.

If I have one word of wisdom for you, it’s this: to live happily in a foreign country, you have to be able to think of yourself as a likable idiot. The hemorrhoids episode happened several months into my stay, so humiliation of the culturally illiterate kind was not new to me. Already I had launched a prawn over a formal banquet with my chopsticks. On another occasion, I had learned that when the buffet line is forming, always the oldest person in the room, not the greediest one, dishes up first. I had learned more or less the hard way that, in a Chinese setting, when the boss is speaking, everyone else shuts up. I had survived so many minor cultural adjustments, telling myself along the way that humiliation is the price you pay for the fun adventure of being a foreigner.

Watson’s Pharmacy is in the quintessentially-Hong Kong New Town Plaza shopping mall. From the atrium, you can scan seven levels of glass-faced shops and restaurants linked by steel escalators. Only the major airports of Asia are more cathedral-like than the malls of Hong Kong. But you can’t pause to admire the setting, because the concourse is as crowded as a stockyard. You enter the stream and keep moving, steering your way toward an escalator. Millions of people a year travel from all over Asia to shop in Hong Kong. But such people, I imagine, remembered to pack their hemorrhoidal ointment.

Like everywhere else in the mall, Watson’s is full of shoppers. And in every aisle (this is typical, too) you’ll see at least one floor clerk, usually a young woman who smiles and stares in unnerving silence as you pass. In one aisle after another, I was on my knees surveying the shelves for a word or image to guide me; but this was not an ailment that lends itself to advertising imagery. I would have to seek assistance.

But I did have a strategy. I would look for an older woman, if I could find one. And there she was, three aisles away, the one uniformed lady who most resembled my mother, someone who would have no sense of humor when it comes to certain kinds of suffering. I calmly asked where I might find the hemorrhoid cream, but then I had to repeat myself several times, to no effect. And this is when the nightmare began to unfurl. Of course, like all elderly Chinese in Hong Kong, she’d seek the help of someone younger with a fresher schoolbook knowledge of English.

While I prepared to be even more embarrassed, she conferred with her co-worker, a woman in her thirties. But the second woman declined to attempt the leap across the language chasm and instead set off to fetch one of the recent high school grads working cosmetics on the other side of the store. Although I had been repeating my mantra, “likable idiot, likable idiot,” religiously, I felt an urge to rush from the store and never return.

But the older woman hadn’t given up. She couldn’t understand my English, but she could speak a little. Inspired by a thought, she turned to me and asked, “What is it used for?”

Now she had me stumped. If it had been a topic for charades, I’m not sure I would have known how to demonstrate it. I know she was thinking, headache, stomachache … but unfortunately, there’s no universal sign language for hemorrhoidal itch. So, what I did was to make a sour face and sort of point to the area in question, and thank God, she understood and didn’t laugh, located my hard-earned remedy before the younger clerk’s threatened arrival, and probably even considered me, when all was said and done, just another likable idiot, an American in Hong Kong.

Broadcast by Joe Chaney on August 27, 2010 • WVPE's Audio Archive
Customs & Rituals • Education • Travel • Permalink • Printer Friendly

Friday, August 20, 2010

Beach Reading

Chop chop there, people! You have to hurry. The pressure is intense to get relaxed and mellow. August is moving right along and beach-reading season is fleeing “like sands through the hourglass.” Soon, autumn will be here, novel-time will have flown and the time for seriousness and self-improvement will bear down upon you. So quick! Don’t’ waste the remainder of the summer; grab a big old novel and lose yourself in the world of “imaginary.”

What a great beach-reading summer this has been for me! My rush into the “imaginary” has included the new novel by Anna Quindlin, Rhoda Janzen’s “Mennonite in a Little Black Dress,” new short story volumes by Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle, the paperbound version of Richard Russo’s “That Old Cape Magic,” and the amusing, Noreen-who-loves-all-things-Southern-recommended, “Elvis and the Dearly Departed:” some books that made me laugh until I cried, and some books that made me cry.

All of those devoured, I experienced a sense of urgency for fresh prey, and went on the hunt from our own Better World Books. Ever faithful, they provided a quick fix. “A Vintage Affair” arrived to fill my plate and I practically swallowed it whole in about twenty-four hours! Actually, just before it was served, I sampled “Shakespeare’s Wife,” a book about Anne Hathaway: an engaging tome, which had to be tossed aside after only about 10 pages. Way too serious for summer: clearly an autumn book, thus, the need for the hunting and the gathering of “A Vintage Affair.”

Several others of the Michiana Chronicles’ folks are much better qualified to review a book than I. They can tell you about symbolism, metaphor, and hidden meaning: technical, critical aspects. I just will say, “Golly, I really liked this book!” It has a bit of mystery, a bit of love story, a protagonist named Phoebe (a name that I always have loved) and lingering, loving descriptions of vintage clothing. What more could you want in a summer read?!

OK. The vintage clothing thing may not be for everybody, but any of you who fondly remember clothing from your past, or who ever have bought a piece of clothing just because it was beautifully constructed or was made from gorgeous fabric , or sewed a garment yourself for the same reason, will be hooked. (Those of you with the stashes of unsewn fabric know who you are and don’t need me to tell you about that guilty pleasure.) And, for you writer-types, “A Vintage Affair” is an illustration of how to stretch your prose. Take something that holds your attention and then write it into your novel. For the right audience, seemingly, it can pad the book in an interesting way by as much as a third.

Isabel Wolff, the author of “A Vintage Affair,” incorporates these clothing discussions into her novel by depicting Phoebe as the proprietor of a recently opened vintage clothing shop. The acquisition and sale of the clothing sets the stage for the lengthy, affectionate descriptions of the garments: so well described in fact, that sometimes you just want to reach out and feel the fabric or examine the workmanship. Those mental, almost tactile, moments, threaded with Phoebe’s dual romantic options with the Miles and Dan characters, and embroidered with the mystery of the blue coat and, construct an ideal beach book. These are reasons that I said, “Golly, I really liked this book!”

Reading-glutton that I am, as the light-time of the days shortens and the summer heat lessens, I’m onto David Nicholls “One Day.” After that, who knows? There may be time to squeeze in the much recommended, “Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand” before I face up to the autumn and go crawling back to “Shakespeare’s Wife.” Before then though, don’t leave me out here alone on my reclining chair; there’s still time for you to grab a slice of “imaginary” and flop down beside me for a relaxing, mellowing beach read.

Broadcast by Jeanette Saddler Taylor on August 20, 2010 • WVPE's Audio Archive
Books & Films • Permalink • Printer Friendly

Friday, August 13, 2010

Mooyiinkweena

Mooyiinkweena – an early Indian name, got politely cleaned up by history and turned into Des Moines (from river “Of the Monks”). The 17th century Indians had a sense of humor. There’s the story of the tribe on the coast of what finally became Massachusetts, justifiably wary of the English traders who finally killed 9/10ths of them with smallpox—who used to keep them from landing from their “floating islands,” and traded by breeches buoy from shore. Despairing of an effective means of communicating their desire for the English not to land, but to hit the road, those gathered on shore “mooned” the sailors to make their point. Not to be outdone by their kin on the east coast we have the Miami word mooyiinkweena. The Indians describe the French and their town with a phrase meaning roaring fool-drunk: sloshed to the back teeth.

I do not intend to get roaring drunk in Des Moines. I’m on my way there to accompany Irish dancers on the fiddle; it’s my job. I’ve bracketed the trip with a pilgrimage to the Prairie Lights book store in Iowa City on the way there, and a visit with an old friend on the way home.

I was struck with the sense of history on the drive this morning, from Indiana to Illinois to Iowa; all three names of Native American derivation. (I’m supposed to be struck; I’m a historian.) All three states have their religious communes: New Harmony, Indiana; Nauvoo, Illinois; Amana, Iowa. All three states have towns reflecting the original beauty of the land: all three have a Bloomington, a New Haven. All three states have been home to Indians from prehistoric times and have hundreds of place names reflecting their continued presence in our history; all three had a France river culture dating from the 1600s. Interstate 80 will take you through all three states—and a good many more besides—but this trip it’s only three. All three states have some wry names for towns, too, showing that things were not always so captivating at first encounter. Indiana has Gnaw Bone (zip 47448 in case you don’t believe me) and French Lick. Hooker Corner is in the middle of a stretch of country on State Road 26. Depressed pioneers in Iowa memorialized their feelings in What Cheer, south of I-80 near North English. But happy travelers might want to stop in Loves Corner, Illinois, near Shawnee National Forest on the Ohio, or head for the ultimate, Garden of Eden (60954) on the Kankakee near Aroma Park.

This trip, Iowa has carried away the beauty prize, and not just because it’s less visited by me and fresher; but for a realization I had as I welcomed a lovely morning on the stretch between the Mississippi River and Iowa City: The roadside was clear of commercial billboards! Lady Bird Johnson, wife of president Lyndon, championed the Highway Beautification Act of 1965, and I remember from my youth when all those billboards came down and you could actually see the scenery again. I guess it stuck in Iowa, where they still have strong laws. The countryside, as a result, reminds even more of a Thomas Hart Benton painting—bit swatches of green and gold, beautiful old farms on rolling hills. I wish we could get back to that esthetic in Indiana and Illinois. There are beguiling things behind all those car dealership signs and service station advertisements, but it was only Iowa that reminded me why city founders named places Belle Plaine, Bloomington, and Springfield.

Broadcast by David James on August 13, 2010 • WVPE's Audio Archive
Nature & Outdoors • Travel • Permalink • Printer Friendly
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April Lidinsky -- More essays by April

Joe Chaney -- Humiliation in Hong Kong / More essays by Joe

Ken Smith -- More essays by Ken

Jeanette Saddler Taylor -- Beach Reading / More essays by Jeanette

Heather Curlee Novak -- House Sick / More essays by Heather

David James -- Mooyiinkweena / More essays by David

Elizabeth Van Jacob -- More essays by Elizabeth

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