We just came off 12 days in Hong Kong pursuing a solution to Hazel’s frequent bladder infections. The final plan was to wait and see. And retest in 3 months. Oh well, we are armed with a lot more data now. Her right kidney does not drain as quickly as it should. This could be due to a congenital defect or due to whatever, maybe fours years of hard living?

Twelve days in a small Hong Kong hotel room with two small children is a valid sanity test and I passed.

But the Hong Kong/Chinese mainland dichotomy tipped me back in the direction of thinking that I will never truly love China. Hong Kong is a big harbor, a massive trade zone. Hong Kong is all about business, business, business. As such, it holds very little inherent fascination for me or my family, but we were able to divert ourselves and enjoy our time there. Even the hospital where Hazel was tested was pleasant.

I have come to know and not quite love, but genuinely like, China through the mainland first. When I think of the mainland Chinese people kindly, I think of them as my husband describes them: rednecks in high-rises. And rednecks are my peeps. But I sometimes find the Chinese lack of civility intolerable. I’m not proud that I can judge so harshly, but I dare you to do differently.

When we lived in Arizona, we were lucky enough to visit our home in San Jose, California, quite frequently. Traveling back and forth became routine and, for the most part, stress-free.  But there was always a moment, at the end of the trip, where the stress levels spiked.  We would make the customary wobbly landing in Phoenix (shit, Chicago is the Windy City?), wake Hazel up (Hazel talked like a Chatty Cathy doll with a broken pull-string through the whole flight, then, like clockwork, fell asleep during the descent), glide through the airport collecting our bags, and head to the shuttle for long-term parking.

The Phoenix airport loves to promote itself as America’s friendliest airport, and in my experience they are almost right. But, in Phoenix, just like every other airport, all the flights would land at the same time and gazillions of people would head for the shuttle bus. The bus. It. The one. I swear they had only one. Or maybe, at best, two. And this is the point where civilization broke down. Too many people, too few resources, it got ugly. People would shove aside my small children to get on that goddamn bus. And I would fume. And lose it. First of all, because it is illogical to think that waiting another fifteen fucking minutes is going to make a difference in your stupid fucking life. And secondly, because you, my friend, don’t matter one fucking iota more than my kids do. Do you really want to risk hurting a child to get home fifteen minutes earlier?

Mainland China is one big shuttle bus line. Well, not line, but crowd. People jostle and grab for what they want. People spit and pee and shit and litter with less than no regard for their fellow travelers. Give people what they need and they are capable of great achievements. And great civility. Anything less, and they are not.

Everyone who has ever lived in China can recite a litany of social offenses he has witnessed, a litany that is either jaw-dropping disgusting or gut-busting funny. I saw a well-dressed, lovely old woman drop a popsicle wrapper on the pristine grounds of a panda preserve. I saw (and heard) a man repeatedly hock loogeys on the floor of a perfectly decent restaurant.  Jimmy’s co-worker saw a man drop-trou and take a shit on the side of a multi-lane freeway during rush hour. Not down in a ditch. Not off in the bushes. On the paved side of a freeway. I’m still working on the hat trick of seeing three men pee on the side of the road during our 20-minute morning drive to Eleanor’s school. I’ve counted two several times, but the hat trick eludes me.

Hong Kong stands in very stark contrast to the mainland. I think someone forgot to tell the Hong Kong-nese that they are part of China now. In general, their social customs are much more amenable to the Western visitor and they enjoy the kind of freedoms that are familiar to Westerners. (Obviously this is a result of 150-years of colonial rule by Westerners, not necessarily the most desirable path to civilization.) During our stay, the South China Morning Post promptly reported Liu Xiaobo’s winning of the Nobel Peace Prize, for example. Mainland press outlets only acknowledged the reward through a series of editorials blasting the West for once again vilifying China by imposing (unwanted) Western values and meddling in internal criminal affairs.

Jimmy, Eleanor, and Hazel enjoy strolling the loogey-free sidewalks of Hong Kong in search of stuff

The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) thinks the Chinese people need stuff (i.e., economic advancement) first and foremost. Yes, we all appreciate the irony that the CCP’s hopes hang on their management of rampant capitalism to raise the bar for China’s citizens. But beyond that, most Westerners doggedly refuse to believe that stuff is the complete answer. Liu Xiaobo believes that individual freedoms, information, and laws are the greatest needs of the Chinese people. We honor him for agreeing with us. Because we had these things before we had stuff and we think of them as inherent, inalienable rights.

Not to mention, practical experience tells us that stuff isn’t the complete answer.  Sometimes you give people all the stuff they could need and they still insist on behaving like assholes.  When I worked in Research Triangle Park, NC, in the 1990s it was a wasteland for lunchtime excursions. So lots of people would end up at the Pizza Hut lunch buffet, just about the fastest lunch in the area.  These were generally people with good jobs at places like pharmaceutical companies, telecom companies, and government research labs. Pizza Hut would dish out pie after pie of veggie pizza. People would pick at it, and some would linger at the counter, angling for position.  Because every 20 minutes or so, they’d throw out one pepperoni pizza. People who had everything any rational human could hope for would fight over a slice of shitty pizza.