Dec. 2020; The Filter

My dog walks funny. It’s absolutely not his fault, but all his life he’s walked a bit like a shaky old man after a few too many lunchtime whiskies. He’s happy and healthy and I’ve had him for about 7 or so years now, but he falls over all the time, he can’t walk on shiny floors, and he’s terrified of most things/people. But he’s my baby. I was walking him today, and a gentleman walking near me said “excuse me, it seems your dog might have stood on something or perhaps hurt himself, is he alright?” I could tell by his tone he was genuinely concerned, and so I went on to explain that he’d been hurt when he was only a few months old and he never 100% recovered, but he was fine. We exchanged a few more pleasantries, and I walked back home. After a while we get to the lobby of my apartment, and two plump (polite word for bloody fat) young schoolboys are loudly whispering about me as we wait for the painfully slow elevator to finally touch down. “Foreigners are too tall. The dog is not cute, and he’s fat, it’s ugly.” Now the old expression “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” immediately sprang to mind, but I’m not going to be mean to some ignorant 10 year old. After all, it’s not his fault he’s so very ill mannered, that’s just bad parenting. (*Side note; I had a lovely afternoon drink with a very sweet and eloquent lady recently, and she commented how the wording used in my Sunday scribble doesn’t ever seem to offend anybody. Well, buckle up, today might very well be the day.) During the ascend up an old lady starts yawping on about foreigners, there’s too many foreigners in China, and some skinny mid-20’s man in a badly fitting suit agrees with her (looks like an apartment agent, they mostly dress like they’ve slept in their clothes and just crawled out of bed.) The little hogs get out out, I get home, dog has a drink, and yet another thought of “why are some people just so damn rude?” crosses my mind. But I firmly believe it’s a little more deep rooted than just plain old bad manners.

*Side paragraph; So over the years many people have asked me about my dog, what’s wrong with his legs, so here’s an explanation. If you don’t care to read about it all then feel free to skip to the next section. But, if you don’t care about animals at all, please feel free to do the world a favour, go home and drink that bottle of bleach or stick your head in the oven and turn the gas up. Ok, so I was walking my dog Omar (rest in peace you big monster) near Shekou around 7 years or so ago. We’re walking and Omar starts sniffing this still shape on the edge of the road, I step near and I eventually notice it’s a puppy. Or at least, it was a puppy. I bend over and two tiny bright eyes meet mine, but the little lump is barely moving. I carefully pick it up, and the tiny helpless frame is around 20cm long. No skin on his head and covered in blood, two open holes in his stomach, 3 or 4 broken ribs poking out through his skin, and his back legs are soft as jelly from a clearly broken hip. This little dog is smashed up. I carry him. Coincidentally and thankfully there’s an animal hospital just a few minutes walk away, where I took my dog Omar for the annual injections he used to go mental whilst receiving. I take him in, and the vet surgeon greets me and I unsettlingly tell him, “this dog is dying. I just found him. Please give him as many painkillers as it takes, but please let him die in peace.” He agreed the dog is dying, was extremely courteous, he took him, and I said my tearful goodbyes to the tiny, black, dirty, bloody pup.

The next day I go in to pay the bill, and offer to bury the pup. The vet informs me “well, he’s actually still alive, but he definitely is dying.” So again I tell him please keep him dosed up with painkillers and let him die in peace. I go home. The next day I go back, and lo and behold he’s still alive. Same story. And the fourth day. But on this day the vet calls me in to the operating room, and gets the tiny black ball of dog on the table. Amazingly he is trying to wag his tail, but barely managing it with the broken hip and his legs spread out beside him like 2 limp fingers. The vet talks to me, and explains “look, there’s a very small chance that we can try to save him. But it’s going to take a lot of time, and it’s going to take a lot of money.” I look down at this utterly helpless little life, and think what’s the kindest thing to do. He’s gone through a lifetime of pain already, being selfish I want to save him but ethically shouldn’t I just ask the vet to euthanize him? Make the pain stop? I snap back into the conversation and I ask “how long would it take?” The vet tells me several operations, and at least 18 months of physiotherapy. Then of course I had to ask, “how much?” Back at that time I was a musician, barely making enough to cover rent, bills and food. Doing a job you love usually doesn’t pay much. The vet replies with “at least ten thousand, possibly more.” This jolted me somewhat, and I put my hands down on the operating table to take it in. And wouldn’t you know it, a second after I put my hand down on the table that tiny, broken little dog put his soft paw right down on top of my hand. And that was that, the decision had been made for me.

He went through 7 major reconstructive operations and a stomach operation, and close to 2 years of physiotherapy. He had to live in a small cage for 6 months so he wouldn’t even try to stand up, as that would have made him basically fall apart. I used to carry him in a bag to the park after a few months, and let him gently walk around. 5 minutes one day. 6 minutes the next day. 10 minutes after a week. Very slowly but very surely, he recovered from his ordeal. And that was about 7 years ago, and it’s pretty easy to understand why he’s my baby. After a year or so he had to get his annual injections, and while I was there I asked the vet what do you think happened to him? It’s weird I hadn’t asked before, the thought just never crossed my mind. I said “I guess a car hit him real bad.” The vets face froze, and slowly he said “no, no car did this. This was a person. A person did this.” Somebody had taken it upon themselves to smash up a helpless puppy, for what? Thrills?! Even now he’s still pretty scared of nearly all people, he’s missing several teeth and he’s no athlete, but he’s happy. And to end on a nicer note, to this day if I put my hand flat down near him he puts his paw right on top of it. That tiny gesture probably saved his life.

Anyway, back to the main blah blah blah. One thing that can truly offend/upset many visitors to Shenzhen is the staring. In fact, if they made it an Olympic event then Shenzhen would win gold, silver and bronze every time. On the metro, in the park, eating dinner in a restaurant or just making your way home, the stares sometimes feel like they never end. Strangely enough, personally I’ve never felt it quite so much in other cities like Beijing, Shanghai, or even Guangzhou. Curious. But here people will just stop and stare, like they’re personally witnessing the resurrection of Christ, or watching godzilla make his way through the street. Mouths open, eyes wide, unable to concentrate on anything else, just the unfaltering blank stare. Now as a man it doesn’t upset me so much as just kind of piss me off, stop being so damn rude, but if I were a lady it would be an entirely different matter. I’ve seen men here stare at girls really quite disgustingly, slowly looking them up and down, undressing them with their eyes, even sometimes approaching them for the dreaded “yo weixin ma?” Just for a moment imagine, if your wife, girlfriend, your sister or even your daughter, had to go through that in another country, the men leering over her like starved pigs slobbering at a fresh meal… For many ladies, I’m absolutely sure this could be an extremely unnerving experience.

But the thing that manages to top the staring, is the unwavering need to open their trap and say exactly what has sprung up in their limited mind. I like to think of it like a filter. Most people see something, perhaps unusual or out of the ordinary, they think about what it is, but the filter stops it from being blurted out for all to hear. They think it, but not say it. This is mostly harmless. Whereas unfortunately some people have no filter. The filter wasn’t never installed in them by their parents. They see something, and a millisecond later it’s been openly blasted out for all to hear, to the point where some people even say it when there’s nobody else around. They’re on their own and see something and out it flies, “black person.” “Foreigner.” “Very fat.” “Wheelchair cripple.” “Too tall…” Just imagine being in a place where everybody who looks at you says “waah, so short! A dwarf!” Our eyes have a filter, too. We notice something, we take a quick glance, but the filter tells us you shouldn’t stare at it. It’s very impolite, and it can make the person feel very upset. I remember being back in London around 4 or so years ago, in China town taking some photos and looking for lunch, and a tourist group walks past me and someone blurts out “waaah, too tall foreigner.” Some of the group laugh, but oh no, not today lady. I didn’t want to come across as intimidating or ill mannered, but I had to approach and (somewhat) politely remind her that “this is London. You’re the foreigner here. But we don’t call you foreigners, because it’s extremely rude.” Her mouth dropped open, wide as a train tunnel, and she just had to announce loudly to the group that “foreigner speaks Chinese!! Ai yah!!”

One thing that some people cannot fathom, is that back in London we don’t feel the need to say “foreigner” to/at people. In all my years I’ve never once heard a member of my family describe someone as a foreigner when talking, it’s just not the done thing. In my mind, by immediately labelling someone with “foreigner” it has connotations of outsider, doesn’t belong here. And if you’ve ever been to London, you know that we have all walks of people from every corner of the globe. So is that the reason for the staring and the spoken remarks? Less exposure to other cultures and people? The shock of seeing someone different? Not one time have I overheard someone using the word Gwei-lo in Hong Kong. Surely food for thought. Even hearing laowei endless times a day in Shenzhen used to really annoy me, but then one day it was simply explained to me. “These people are not meaning to be rude, they just have never been taught what is polite and what is impolite. You can’t blame them for something they do not know.” Bam, the penny drops. For several years I thought it was an educational thing, but of course not. I’ve been around the countryside of Thailand and Cambodia, poor areas with less than renowned educational systems, and only been met with warm smiles and kind words, not freakish staring and remarks. Some people unwittingly associate a good education with a good person, oh no no no. This has nothing to do with education, it’s all to do with upbringing.

As I’ve commented before, I don’t see badly behaved brat kids, shouting and screaming and arguing with momma over toys or sweets or playing video games. I see incapable and ill-equipped parents. If someone gets a dog, the first thing any intelligent person would do would be to think about training it. Buy a book, take a course, at least watch a few tutorial videos. But when it comes to having kids many think that “it just comes naturally.” HA! About as naturally as lion taming or alligator wrestling! Others hold the idea that it’s the schools job to teach them how to be normal, polite human beings. Wrong again! It’s the schools job to teach them Pythagoras theorem and chemical reactions and water displacement principles, the rest is up to the family. You got a kid who can’t share with other kids, short tempered and anger issues, then guess what? That kid ain’t never gonna grow up to be a well rounded, pleasant adult, no matter what university they go to. You don’t want to be the parent of the plump schoolboy who talks so rudely about the tall foreigner and his dog, thinking they can’t understand what’s being said.

One thing that the English language is blessed with, is frightfully creative idioms. I know all languages do, but I only understand the English ones. You can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Look before you leap. How about think before you speak. It’s not an idiom, just a very simple thing that most people manage to do, but some just have no filter. If you’re a parent, it’s your obligation to install that filter in your kids head. And if you’re an adult, before you stare at someone who looks different or opens your mouth to blurt out whatever crosses your mind, just stop. You don’t need to say it. You don’t need to stare or try to sneakily take a photo. We all want our beautiful country to be even better developed, how about it being more polite, too.

*P.S; I’m publishing this again, February 2025, and he’s still alive and wobbling :)