Here's Lookin' at You

It seems like it’s rained every day for two months now. It hasn’t, but the amount of rain on the wet days has more than made up for the dry ones. But it is always bright and sunny at KFC, thanks mostly to the fluorescent lights and heat lamps, respectively.

I got this picture the last time we went there. The little girl added a little sunshine to our day while she was staring at us half-baffled, half-scared, and half-surprised (I know that's three halves). It got me thinking about general innocence in Chinese culture and of Chinese people in many facets of life. Taste in music is one example. A truly horrible boy band from Britain doing a cover of an already bad Celline Dion song will inevitably score more points with a Chinese crowd than U2 or Wilco. It’s easy to recognize a similarity to American teen-aged girls’ sophisticated musical tastes.

Another good example is behavior between same-sex friends, who openly show their affection by holding each other’s hands or walking with arms around shoulders. When we first arrived, Nathan and I spoke about that general innocence in the culture. I think it’s something to be admired and respected, and I wish there were a way to recover that as a culture after it was lost.

Of course, as with any culture there are some parts of the culture here that aren’t quite consistent with this innocence. But during my year here I can’t say I’ve missed the liberal dose of sex in everything from shampoo commercials to half-time shows.