20 THINGS WE LEARNED FROM CHASE

Chase is a 22-year-old American from Florida. After finishing his undergrad degree in chemistry, he decided to teach English in China and says it was the best decision of his life. He has been teaching English at a local university in Nanjing and also giving private lessons to Chinese students whose parents want to enhance their kids' English-language skills in advance of studying North America. With two incomes, he says he lives in style, never having to cook a meal and always with money in his pocket. And he works much less than a 40 hour week.

Additionally, Chinese girls love Chase. Why? Becasue he is handsome, witty, urbane and a tall, blond westerner. Back home, he says he felt like just another college graduate looking for a job. Here, he is a celebrity.

In a four hour, completely off-the-tour-book tour, Chase showed us places and told us things that only an ex-pat could garner by living here. Here are 20 things we learned about China from Chase:

1. It is a woman's world in China. There are many more young Chinese men than women in the country. (34 million to be exact.) This is partly due to the one-child policy, a social policy to limit population growth and increase the general standard of living, unprecedented in human history. The unexpected side effect of a gender imbalance was created because, due to traditional values, boys are more highly valued than girls. So parents may have aborted female fetuses in order to have their one child be a boy. Now, China is a girls' market dream. (Chase says the following:) when a guy wants to date a girl, she asks, "So, do you have a house, a car, a good job? No? Well, then come back to see me when you do!"

2. Men will often be seen walking down the street with their girlfriends, wearing the girlfriend's obviously feminine handbag over his shoulder while holding her parasol over both of their heads. Carrying these items for the girlfriend is a status symbol. He is what the local girls term "a good boyfriend." It is the boyfriend's declaration to the world: "Look at me! I am not one of the unlucky 34 million. I have a girlfriend. Do you?"

3. Foreigners like Chase can drink for free at the local Shanghai and Nanjing hot spots. All he has to do is be visible in the establishment, where he is a living advertisement that the place has western appeal.

4. Chinese girls have a fetish for high heels. They wear these muscle and tendon -wrecking devices everywhere, even for hikes in the woods. The styles and colours of high-heeled shoes are eye-popping.

5. The Chinese share a stereotype about Jews that they are all wizards of high finance and gifted scientists like Einstein, to whom they often compare Chase. (Well, as a teacher, I would have to say he is gifted. After all, he taught himself a slew of Chinese characters in one year by texting in Chinese to his students and friends while on the Metro and by studying the ads on billboards on his way to work.) The result: he is held in high esteem by all, especially his students who find him very cool.

6. The Chinese are not racist. In fact, they celebrate their national minorities. But they hate the Japanese with a passion. There is good reason for that. We have recently come away in tears from the Museum dedicated to remembering the Japanese massacres in Nanjing of 1937. Chase tries to explain to his students that they shouldn't hate all Japanese, or at least not the new generation of Japanese. But, no! They insist they hate all the Japanese.

7. Siobhan and I have wondered what the Chinese think of us travelling together. Do they think I am a sugar daddy? "No problem!" says Chase. "There are a lot of sugar daddies here." Chinese men don't bother to get divorced. They just pick up a mistress called (I forget!) Anyway, we have seen lots of ugly, old farts like me with gorgeous young women hanging on their arms. I try to tell everyone that Siobhan is "wo nuer" (my daughter.)

8. All westerners look the same to the Chinese. One student will tell Chase one day that he has a seen a movie with Brad Pitt starring and that Chase looks just like Brad Pitt. (He doesn't.) The next day, another student will say he looks like Leonardo di Caprio or

David Beckham or whatever actor as in the film.

1. The Chinese of today put a high value on white skin. The girls carry parasols to keep off the sun. When he came here, Chase liked to wear shorts and short-sleeved shirts because it gets so hot here. However, his students and friends did not like the fact that he was getting tanned. They wanted their special foreigner friend and teacher to stay lily white. So, he says, due to peer pressure, he wears long pants and long sleeves.

2. The Chinese of today also prize good nails. In feudal times, less than a century ago, one of the ways that the aristocrats set themselves apart from the peasants was to cultivate long nails, as a sign that they never had to do physical labour. For less than $2 US, Chase gets his nails done once in a while. His students are so impressed with his nails but he doesn't tell them that he gets them done by a manicurist.

3. Young people here are nuts about western fashion. Chase took us to a three story mall under the main intersection of Nanjing called Fashion Lady. The place is literally irridescent with lights in the ceiling, in the walls, in the floor. And it goes on and on in a labyrinthian manner underground forever. Theseus would never find his way out, even with a ball of string, because, after a while, the flashing lights are hypnotic. It is packed with Chinese girls (and their boyfriends in tow) who amble down its narrow halls in high heels, parcels in hand, wandering from store to store, trying things on. If Siobhan goes into one of the tiny stores, a group of Chinese girls follows her in to see what a foreign girl finds interesting inside. If Siobhan looks at an item, the girls want to look at it too. The mall never seems to end but you can enter or exit through dozens of accesses to the street above. There are stalls serving fruit drinks with eye-catching displays of the fresh fruit. And there are lounge areas where your boyfriend (or father) can wait for you. Food courts too. Literally mesmerizing.

4. There are lots of African students in China. I asked if they are subsidized by the Chinese government. Chase was not sure but thought it more likely that they have rich parents. They are mainly from Rwanda, Ghana, and Congo. Like him, they make some extra yuan teaching English privately. But they can't command the same wages as him because Chinese parents can't be convinced that they will teach the proper accent necessary to succeed in school in North America. So, mostly, they tell the Chinese parents that they are black Americans.

5. The Chinese mostly say what is on their minds. For example, when Chase showed his Chinese friends a photo of himself when he was fat and lived in the US before coming here, eating better, and walking everywhere, they told him he "looked like a panda."

6. There are openly operating brothels in town. In fact, Chase showed us one just a few doors from our youth hostel. If you peek in the front glass door, you can see the madeup girls sitting in a row on a sofa just inside. I asked Chase if they have the girls hooked on drugs. He said he liked to think they did it of their own accord...

7. I was wrong about people not reading on the subway. Chase says that, in the morning, a lot of people are reading newspapers. Others are not just texting but reading on their tablets. As if to prove his point, Chase took us to a bookstore that was located in an abandonned, underground parking garage. It was really incongruous to walk up and down the ramps that were lined with tables full of books. The place was quite large and there were a lot of people inside browsing. Thee were huge wooden crosses at both ends of the bookstore and a big red star in between.

8. Taco Bell set up two franchise operations in China. They both failed. As opposed to KFC, McDs and Pizza Hut.

9. People in Nanjing wear t-shirts with random English words on them, usually making no sense at all. However, since most Chinese cannot read English, they don't know and think the t-shirts are cool, just because they are in English. Similarly, store names in English like "adj: rock on!" make so sense at all but they are cool, too.

10. Chase says the sky in Nanjing is either yellow or gray. As if to prove him wrong, the clouds part for our walk along the lakeshore and the sky turns blue for a the rest of our visit.

11. Everybody litters in China. It takes a long time for westerners to give up their non-littering habits. However, the fact of the matter is that there is a legion of seniors and poor people who walk around with huge plastic bags scooping up recyclables, even from garbage cans. Then, these bags end up piled eight feet high (see photo album) on people's bicycles going to who-knows-where, where, Chase thinks, there are "recycling warlords" who buy and crush the stuff.

12. Girls in China can wear dresses slit to the butt or short shorts that barely cover the crotch. However, They cannot show any cleavage whatsoever or risk being considered sluts. Today, Siobhan is shocked to learn that she is dressed as a slut.

We are sad to part from Chase. His insights were fascinating and funny. We say goodbye and he accepts, as a parting gift, a Canada pen as a souvenir. The pen was made in China.