Reverse Culture Shock II: We don't have these vehicles in China

On my second or third day home, I decided to take a walk around the neighborhood to see how it’s changed and get some exercise. I’m staying with my folks, and they live out in the countryside, beyond even the Clovis suburban fringe—the Chinese word for suburban fringe is 郊外 (flat tone “jiao”, falling tone “wai”; countryside is 乡下, flat tone “xiang” and falling tone “xia”).

Since I was walking about on what was basically a country road, the majority of the vehicles driving on the streets were pickup trucks. After the sixth or seventh truck passed by, it dawned on me that I have never seen such vehicles in the Middle Kingdom. The absence of pickup trucks in China is not at all surprising: most Chinese urban dwellers live in small apartments and have no need to haul about trash or other things from their homes.

People living in expensive villas are wealthy enough to simply pay someone to come out and haul stuff away rather than using their own vehicles to do it. Many of these folks do have SUVs and have formed SUV off-road clubs and drive these vehicles in the mountains around Beijing during weekends.

Finally, farmers, who still comprise the bulk of China’s population, are too poor to afford a pickup truck. Even well-off farmers typically have just one tractor and they drive it into town, pulling a cart, to sell produce, such as watermelons, apples, and the like. Really poor farmers will haul that stuff into town on horse- and mule-drawn carts.

Several of these carts would typically show up every weekend outside the north gate of my first Beijing home, the Beijing International Studies University, which is located on the Beijing 郊外just east of the Fifth Ring Road. Indeed, I’ve seen farmer’s horse-drawn carts appear a bit further into Beijing, on the fourth ring road.

Since China doesn’t have pickup trucks, it also doesn’t have the hick-redneck pickup culture. I should state here that most pickup drivers, of course, aren’t part of that subculture—most drive pickups for very practical reasons, like one of very best friends in CA who has done excellent writing about the Sierra Nevada mountains here. He drives, or used to drive, a pickup truck simply because it was the best way of getting about the mountains and a very good vehicle to camp out of to boot.

That said, there are a not insubstantial number of young rural American men who drive pickup trucks not because they need to use them to haul things about or camp in the outdoors. The vehicle rather serves as a statement identifying themselves as young men who are not only “rednecks”, but might proud of being “rednecks.”

They consequently adorn their vehicles with gun racks across the back window—in China, of course, gun ownership is strictly regulated—and redneck pride bumper stickers. And many of these vehicles, including several that passed me by during my countryside stroll, sport big oversized wheels that thrust the vehicle way up from the ground. I can’t think of any practical purpose these wheels serve, so they must have been put on to make some kind of a statement about the size of the driver’s sexual organ.

Although I haven't missed this aspect of US society while living in the Middle Kingdom, there are certainly many other facets of America I do miss. These include its beautiful scenery, vibrant urban popular culture, jazz music, and above all, its multicultural tolerance. One can certainly disagree with Obama’s policies, but everyone in America ought to be very proud of the fact that the country could elect a black president just three decades after scores of blacks and whites involved in the civil rights movement were murdered because they agitated for equal schools and an end to segregated drinking fountains.

As the Chinese would say, 美国最近在这个方面进步很多—“mei[falling and rising tone] guo[rising tone] zui[falling tone] jin[falling tone] zai[falling tone] na[falling tone] ge[falling tone] fang[flat tone] mian[falling tone] jin[falling tone] bu[falling tone] hen[falling and rising tone] duo[flat tone]—America has recently progressed a lot in this area/sphere. I could add that all my Chinese friends were very happy about Obama’s election and believe that Sino-American relations will improve a lot under this watch.