Speaking Chinese in Latin America

My Chinese was proving to be more of an asset in getting around in South America than my native English, or my broken Spanish. You can easily tell who is a Chinese speaker, while it is impossible to do the same for English speakers. Furthermore, the Chinese, who run many of the small businesses, can be found at locations accessible to tourists. I could easily walk into a shop, order a glass of coconut, and ask for directions.

Lani the Liverpool Gal

I met Lani from Britain when I was in Sao Paulo. She was heading to Bolivia to study Spanish. A quiet spunky girl with a love for adventure, she has travelled alone to so many parts of the world, and has endured creepy Moroccans sneaking up to whisper “Do you want to sleep with me?” in her ear and much more. I hope she is enjoying her time in La Paz.

Saved by Visa

This post will sound like an ad for Visa. I was leaving Sao Paulo by bus for the airport to catch my flight. I thought I could buy the ticket on the bus but found out otherwise when the bus pulled in at 5pm. It would leave in 5 minutes. I immediately ran across the terminal to buy my ticket, only to find out that I did not have enough Real on me. Thankfully, I pulled out my Visa card, which they were able to accept. I made it back just as the bus was pulling out of the terminal.

The City Center of Sao Paulo, on a Sunday, reminds me of a bombed out war zone. Half of the area is beautiful and the other half is dilapidated and filled with homeless people sleeping under makeshift shelters. I ran into a kid who asked me for money. We subsequently bumped into each other four times in the city (I do not think he was following me) and we grinned and gave each other thumbs up every time we did so.

With the city center half-empty, I made my way to Liberdade, or Japantown, to taste the Asian food that I have been missing for the last month. While eating sushi, a “rocker” girl sat down next to me. Her forearms were covered with tattoos. Impressed, I peered closer and discovered that the tattoos were images of Hello Kitty and Totoro Chan (Hamster cartoon). Eventually, I was forced to vacate my position when a Goth party slowly coalesced around my bench. I was afraid people would mistake me for one of the Goths with my raven hair and dark eyelashes.

Just when I thought I was getting the hang of Portuguese, I was proven wrong on my first day in Sao Paulo. I took the overnight bus from Rio to Sao Paulo and got into town at 6am in the morning. Without a booking, I went to a hostel which my Turkish friend recommended. It was closed and I came back later in the day and an old man who did not speak any English let me in.

I spent 15 minutes trying to explain that I wanted to stay for four days at the hostel. The owner kept trying to cross out the dates I listed, and I thought he did not understand what I was saying. He then led me upstairs to look at the rooms, taking care to point out the new beds and the incredibly clean toilet. I thought it was the most beautiful hostel I have been in although I noted that they were still fixing up the rooms: wooden planks laid on the floor. The beds were all uncovered, and I thought it was such a pity that this beautiful hostel was empty. He pointed to a bed and I laid my stuff there thinking that this was where he wanted me to sleep. I proceeded to bath before heading out into the city.

When I came back at night, I decided to walk onto a shadow-shrouded balcony garden when a lady who was walking into the back of the house saw me. She screamed and shouted at me to reveal myself. At the same time, she told her boyfriend to rush to the kitchen to grab a knife. It turns out that the lady, the daughter of the old man, was shocked that a stranger was wandering in her hostel when it was closed for renovations. The old man was trying to tell me that I could not stay here, and went up to show me the state of repairs to convey his point, and finally gave up when he realized I had no idea what he was saying.

Given the insane price inflation at hostels in Rio during the New Year, I thought I had over-paid until I met two Americans who booked the same hostel online and paid twice the substantial amount I paid.

A hypothesis I have in mind could be that most South Americans booked by phone. Hence, the internet, instead of offering the most competitive price, allows price discrimination as it is the medium through which wealthier foreign tourists booked.

Despite the flack that favelas get for drugs and guns, most people living there are simply working class people. I made two trips to the favelas in Rio, once on a guided tour and the second time with my Turkish friend Tumay – she kept telling me to blend in. Considering my ethnicity, I am probably just as conspicuous wearing a floppy touristy hat and carrying an oversized SLR camera.

Rocinha was my destination. It is the largest favela. The bustling sounds of the market there and the make-shift housing with their corrugated tin roofs would not seem out of place in many parts of Asia. A friend on the tour was told by a “stranger” not to take pictures at one point on the trip – the drug dealers do not appreciate publicity. As a side note, I found out just before I left Rio that the Australian sleeping under my bed was buying drugs in Rocinha. He came back high one night, beat up a taxi driver, an Argentinean in my room and the hostel owner. True to my un-wake-able self - I slept through all the drama.

Rafael, my Brazilian friend, felt that City of Gods glamorized the violence of the favela. He thinks Brazilians now see the favela as a zoo, further stripping people there of the little dignity they have. He mentions how rich people see going to funk parties in the favela and sleeping with a favela girl as the hip thing: a way to flaunt the power their wealth brings them.
I asked Rafael what Brazilians thought about the favela issue. He claims that there are two broad perspectives: one group believes that education and NGOs will solve the issue, the other believes that a violent police, with big guns and trigger-happy fingers, will keep the peace. Most people simply do not want to think about it.

Rocinha was not my last visit to a favela. When I left Rio, I accidentally took the bus to the wrong terminal and walked out into a favela in the dead of the night. I immediately jumped into a cab and fled into the safety of the night. In Sao Paulo, I tried finding an arts district and ended up taking a bus for an hour only to find myself in the middle of a favela carrying my oversized camera and wearing my touristy hat – I walked out unscathed, except for an incident where a person stopped me from taking pictures of his house.

(Busan, South Korea)

My entry two years ago on “Marrying a Korean Girl” attracted a surprising amount of attention. I still receive comments on it. I showed it to an unnamed schoolmate at Tsinghua, who will be given the name HLSKGFTGS (Harvard Law School Korean Girl from THAT Girl’s School) to protect her identity. HLSKGFTGS complained that I failed to cover dating/marriage from a Korean Guy’s perspective. This article will add to my previous article and rectify the problem HLSKGFTGS raised.

The attractiveness of a Korean guy in elite Korean society is as follows:

Boyfriend Material Index = (School*Major) + (Chaebol*Relationship) + (Special Talents)

School: Preferably Ivy League or if Korean, it better be Seoul National, Korean University, or Yonsei (SKY). Did I say preferably Ivy League? And by the way, we want records of high schools/middle schools/elementary schools. Bonus points if he went to a prep school in America.
Major: Doctors preferred, but if you are from an Ivy League and from a Chaebol family, you get off light on this one.
Chaebol: The bigger the Chaebol the better.
Relationship: Distance of relationship to founder of Chaebol. So if you are from a Chaebol family, but you are an illegitimate son or a distant relative of the founder, good luck. You will need it.
Special Talents: Any (Western) musical instrument is a plus…only after you have met the other criteria.

Now the similar equation which Korean guys use to evaluate Korean girls in elite social circles:

Wife Desirability Index = (Special Talents) + (School) + (Chaebol) + (Natural Beauty*Plastic Surgery)

I thought beauty would be an important factor, but as HLSKGFTGS observed, the supply of Korean girls in Ivy League universities outstrip Korean guys, which means that guys can be more selective. I would add that with the availability of plastic surgery, most girls can cross the beauty selection bar. Unlike guys, special talents play an important role for females. The ideal girlfriend should study fine arts and play a musical instrument, preferably the cello, or at least the piano but god bless if she plays samulnori.

I recommend that the Chaebol kids heading to New York City for their weekly social minglings bring an index card carrying these equations. My oversimplified picture makes choosing a partner so much easier. They should also teach this on the Korean math channel. Seriously.

My first introduction to the favelas (slums) of Rio de Janiero was through the movie, City of Gods, and the fervent warnings of the hostel owner against visiting the favela without a tour guide. A guest at the hostel I stayed at actually works for a non-profit in a favela in Sau Paulo. He plays soccer with drug dealers on the weekend. When I asked him if it was wise to visit the Rio favela, he said “Sao Paulo favelas have drugs. Rio favelas have drugs and guns…big guns. I would not dream of going there.”

The difference is that the drug trade in Sao Paulo is monopolized by a single gang. Guns are bad for business. Hence, the gang enforces a de-facto anti-gun law. Rio on the other hand has four gangs in an active gun war. Violence peaked 10 years ago when one of the gang tried to dominate the entire trade. They never succeeded. The only change was that Macdonald’s left the favela. They still have local fast food chain Bob’s Burger though.

According to my German guide, these gangs have communist heritages. During the military dictatorship in the 1960s, the government jailed communists with common criminals, hoping that the criminals would tear the communists up. Instead, the communists organized the criminals, teaching them guerilla warfare along with Marxist theories. When the prisoners got out, they decided to sell drugs to undermine the rich elite…and there was no going back. The groups still have names like The Red Command or The Red Faction.

My guide also claimed that there is less risk of robbery in a favela than in the city. Robbery disrupts the profitable drug trade, and the gangs discourage it. Shooting is a problem though, as the gangs have access to automatic weapons. A French friend who lives next to the favela recounts how she can tell whether it was a gang versus gang fight or gangs versus police fight by the rhythm of the gun shots.