It seems like the autumn was all too short, and the long winter is already well underway. Michigan is somewhat of a land of extremes, which half a year of beautiful weather and sunny skies, and half a year of cloud cover and snow.

With moving back to the US from Beijing some things have been easier, and some things harder. I’ve been trying to make more contacts with US translation agencies since there still seems to be quite a large gap in rates between here and China. Rates that could provide good standards of living in China just don’t cut it with America’s high cost of living. I also have been trying to make the transition from part-time translating on the side to doing it full-time, and that takes some time. 

Today I came across an article in the NYT that I felt a strong connection to (link). It was written by a freelance writer who works a few hours a week in retail and says that the job helps her keep her sanity in the lonely world of freelancing. While I love the flexibility and time it allows me to spend with my family, I also get cabin fever here sometimes staying cooped up translating late into the night. I find that I do most of my work in the evening both because we have things to do during the day, and because that is when clients in Beijing will be online to talk about work. 

It all started a few months ago a friend of a friend who owns a Chinese import store out by Detroit asked me to give him a hand with the store he was renting for the holiday season near where I live. Now Chinese imports are everywhere here, and it’s almost as if all of the major stores are really just ‘Chinese import stores’. I like this one, though, because unlike most stores who just sit back and order what they want from wholesaling catalogs or hire MBAs to crunch the numbers and do the buying from the offices back home, this owner actually gets on the plane, goes to China, visits factories, and hand picks what he wants, shipping it back himself. And most of it is not what you usually find in markets in China. When we just moved back to Michigan last summer we visited northern Indiana to get some Amish cooking and happened to stop by a huge flea market that was in the area. It was kind of sad to see that almost the entire flea market was full of cheap Chinese imports, and that it was almost as if I had never left China. We had to do some searching before we could find a store with locally made items. 

I also liked the store because the owner spends a lot of time getting to know his customers and what they want.  At first when I was unpacking the boxes I thought “oh no, more cheap Chinese crap that nobody here really needs.” Now it’s true that nobody here really needs most of the stuff, but I was completely blown away when during the first week everyone kept talking about how beautiful everything was and how great the store was.

The store had an interesting mix of items that at first glance didn’t seem to really go together: anime paraphenalia, katana swords and pocket knives, big mass-produced looking artwork of animals, waterfall motion pictures, a bunch of random Asian stuff, and religions items (mostly Jesuses and Marys, but also some Hindu and Muslim stuff). For some reason, though, these things all fit together in ordinary American’s minds I think. It reminded me of when I was in elementary school and went with a friend to his church’s Halloween scary forest. While waiting to go through the forest the minister put on a show on stage where he would chop a watermelon in half on his son’s stomach with a katana sword (he was supposedly a black belt in karate). For some reason this “Asian” material culture is so popular here, even though it might not be representative of the real thing. It seems to me to be far more popular than any European or African culture here in the States. I can’t think of any other foreign culture where a middle-aged man who one might assume to fit the bill of a staunch Republican would say “Boy, this Asian stuff is just so cool!”

There were many different types of customers, too. A lot of people loved the swords and weapons, which I knew next to nothing about. I kind of pretended to know what I was doing, but I made a few blunders. Once I touched the blade of a sword and the customer gasped, saying “Blasphemy! You touched the blade!” Others would come in and casually say “Please hand me [insert name of Lord of the Rings sword]” and I would say “ummm…. which one?” Then others would tell me we had the flail mislabled as a mace, or the Bleach sword was given the wrong name.  We had several katanas worth over $300, but never sold a single one while I was there. The most popular swords were cheap katana sets of 3 for $50 that are really for display only (unless you want to be like this guy). The only Chinese swords in the store were Taichi swords, and I was surprised that these sold really well. Taichi is very popular here now, even my 90 year-old-grandmother has done it at her retirement home. 

Some people came in saying they were looking for stuff for their Chinese themed bedroom, then walk out with something Japanese. I don’t really want to be a jerk, so I go with the flow. One guy saw our calligraphy posters of Chinese words like 爱,　武, etc., and asked if we had one that says “recover” and showed me a tattoo on his back of the character 复. One girl had fallen in love with Japanese culture after watching “Memoirs of a Geisha”, so she got a kimono for Christmas.

I was also surprised at how much people knew about China. When the mall opens it’s usually full of senior citizens walking around in circles, and one of them stopped once and told me he had seen similar wooden chests when he was stationed in Shanghai in WWII. A lot of people asked for those Chinese cloth shoes, but we didn’t carry them. There was some business with American communists wanting to buy those old propaganda posters of Mao, and I think one even called me “comrade” once.

The anime stuff was interesting, but I have been completely out of the loop since Dragonball Z and Cowboy Bebop. Now the most popular ones here seem to be Naruto, Death Note, Bleach, and Inyuasha. The popular video games with paraphenalia are Zelda, Kingdom Hearts, and Final Fantasy. At first I had no idea who Cloud and Sephiroth were, but now I can pick them out easily. It’s the fans of this stuff that are the core customers, and some of them told me they would drive hundreds of miles to conventions to get those things, and were elated that we had them there now. 

I have always been curious why certain anime gets translated in the US and others make it to China. There is some overlap, and with online video the lines are blurred even more (Inyuasha is very popular in China). Before going to China I thought I knew something about anime, but had never heard of 樱桃小丸子, 蜡笔小新, and “Detective Conan”. Perhaps it is because these are non-violent and aimed at kids and could make it through the censors easier than the other ones might.

The thing I liked most about working at the store was just chatting with the people who would wander in, and a lot of people just started talking to me about whatever was on their mind. I think I freaked out this Chinese exchange student who is going to a high school here when I asked to see her ID to use the credit card machine, and when she didn’t have any ID except for her Chinese 身份证 I told her in Chinese that I could read it. Since the owner allowed bargaining, it was also fun to be on the other side of the coin and haggle a bit with people. 

The store was just a seasonal one, so it closed up at the end of January. Even though I hate excessive holiday consumerism as much as anyone else, it was fun a lot of the time, and at least got me out of the house once in a while and away from the computer. I still have a lot of catching up to do on the anime end though, and am looking to pick up another part-time job to see how it goes. In the spirit of asian weaponry, here are the twelve traditional Chinese weapons (or one version of them): 

刀、枪、剑、镋、棍、叉、耙、鞭、锏、锤、斧、钩、镰、扒、拐、弓箭、藤牌

Knife, spear, sword, forked spear, club, fork, rake (Zhu Bajie’s weapon of choice), whip, rapier, hammer, axe, hooked sword, sickle, pitchfork, cane, bow and arrows, and shield

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