Fat Kid on a Rampage

This topic of this post is two-fold—fat kids and schools (completely unnecessary and actually kind of inapprop used but that was for you Mimi, wasn't sure if I'd ever have a chance to use such a toolish word), and there's a kind of long detour before you get to the rampaging. In short, the stereotype that Chinese people are small is false. Still a lot of short people, but you'll need to change that to short pudgy people.

Last year for my HIS 325: China, 1850 to the Present class, I wrote my term paper about gender inequality in China since the Communists officially took power in 1949, and for my research a learned a lot about the impacts of the one-child policy b/c that's been the main cause for the gender balance. I read a lot of stories about sick parents sacrificing their health to save money so that their kid could eat the best food/go out to eat/have the best ___ (or basically held hostage by their kid) so that it wouldn't influence their school work (typical Asians) b/c they only had one kid. Since most families only have one kid, they spoil the kid and never tell them no and the kid grows up a spoiled, selfish, brat, etc. In the same semester, we read a newspaper story in Chinese about how there are more and more "肥胖型儿童" or literally "fat shaped kids" in China.

On average (not considering the peasants who would throw off the avg), I think Chinese people are fatter than Americans. By fatter, I don't mean bigger because I don't think Chinese people will ever come close to weighing more than Americans, but I mean fatter as in flabbier. Everyone here is super flabby and fat because 1. They eat tons of oil (and I'm pretty sure MSG-味精？) and 2. Chinese people just don't exercise. I mean, in their minds, they do because they consider walking exercise. (A family friend lives in a super nice complex where really rich people (Chinese people and foreigners) live w/a really nice gym, and she says that the vast majority of the people she sees at the gym are foreigners.)

Why don't Chinese people exercise? Possible reasons: gyms are expensive/shitty if affordable/space is tight, why have a treadmill?/conserve energy—exercise would just make you hungrier = more money spent on food—I really wouldn't be surprised if this was a reason.

I'd say that for the majority, women don't exercise. Even the girls I played against who were on the 农大(Beijing University of Agriculture and w/e) basketball team were flabby. I wouldn't have believed that they played basketball except for the fact that they were tall. As one leg model on CCTV put it, "I never run or do anything strenuous because it would make my legs get big from building muscle…(How do you get exercise?) I walk." -_-

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For kids through high school, they're the typical Asian. Study, study, study, study. That stereotype is still true.

You remember how every now and then in middle school you'd have that fob in one of your classes who could barely speak English, but was still in your super advanced math class? (which later became non-fob English in high school, but just more obviously genius than all the other Americans. And then in college, how all the internationals seemed to speak math and breeze thru everything written not written in english—and I mean the real internationals. Not the kids who went to an international school in HK/China, but the kids from korea that don't speak to anybody but the other Koreans in Korean and the Chinese grad students who all know each other and speak fob to everybody else.)

Well these people are the reason why there's a stereotype that all Asians are smart. I can tell you first hand tho that this is so not true (take me for example, and my almost 9 yr old cousin). So while I'm telling you that this stereotype is not true, the one about how Asians study all the time is. And even if you aren't studying, you're still studying because you're still in school.

[I interviewed (testing English abilities, at least at the beg…-_-) way too many people for the hotel where our office was, and at the beg, one of the first questions I'd ask was, what do you like to do for fun?—"huh? Hehe, sorry, I don't understand, what do you mean?" One girl had no hotel experience, only experience watching a hotel (like hospital runs?) during her hotel class, so I asked her, "what did you learn when you went out to the hotel to watch?" …(She completely misunderstood)…"I didn't do anything, only study. I never went out…only study".]

Based on my convos w/the guys that I typically ball with, this is what I've learned. Chinese people don't do anything, but study. Summer break is only about 4-6 weeks long depending on what grade you're in and if you're in college/HS; about 7 weeks long, but def not 2 months for elementary schoolers. I think most colleges/HS finish in the 2^nd week of july, around the 10^th or so, give or take a week, and start again aug 16^th or sept 1^st. And if you're gonna be 高三(3^rd year of hs), which is the equiv to a hs senior in the us because you're preparing to apply to colleges, your life pretty much sucks for the next year. But it's a different kind of horrible that 1^st semester of senior year was because even though you don't have to apply to colleges, you have to start school (just after you finished your gaokao prep class) 2 weeks earlier(8/16 this year) than everyone else and then prep all year for the 高考（gaokao）, which pretty much determines your future.

The gaokao is kind of like the SAT, but only b/c they both influence your college options. The gaokao pretty much explains why Chinese people study nonstop. It's administered once in June and lasts for about 3 days, and in those 3 days you take 5 tests, each lasting about 2 hrs each, testing you on EVERYTHING you've ever learned since 1^st grade. You could be the worst student for the last 15 or w/e years, never pay attn, and get horrible grades in school, but still get into the top colleges if you ace the gaokao. Conversely, you could be the stereotypical Chinese (not sure how you can be the stereotypical Chinese when you're in china…maybe its like Mao's ideal Chinese student?), but if you get sick during the gaokao or have headache and start hearing Voldemort's voice in your head and want to pass out, you can't reschedule. You either take it or wait til next year.

If you eff up, you can go to the crappy school your test score qualifies for, or study for another year to prep for it. Although, even if you do well, your life still sucks because you go to college in China. 6 people to a room the size of a Bloomberg single, 14 classes a semester (most classes are once a week but still…WHAT?!), early morning classes (I think 8 am?) and stupid reqs. I've had people tell me they didn't have to take these classes, but the recent grads/current students have all told me that they have to take classes like Maoist Thinking, Marxist Thinking, and Military History…LONG LIVE THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY! (btw, did you know that the CCP wiki page is blocked in china? Yay for VPN…tech, it's actually the Communist Part of China)

Anyways, that's the background of why most Chinese kids are the way they are. Only child + stiff competition + study + Asian "exercise" + Asian parents = spoiled little round children.

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Despite knowing this, I could barely hide my shock when my uncle's family in Linyi picked me up and I saw my previously normal/kinda small sized cousin (who gained 30 lbs in 2 yrs w/o much vertical growth) stampede-waddle over to greet me. Thank god I arrived in Linyi where the whole airport is dimly lit.

[Anybody other than Toni seen Flushed Away? Probly not. Anyways, my cousin reminds me of Sid because he's pretty goofy (hopefully you don't need my help to pick which one...), but with a temper and more entitled attitude.]

His mom is concerned about his huge and sudden weight gain, but she can't prevent him from eating something partially because he's got the worst temper i've ever seen and he's also kind of bigger than her. He's not that tall (or taller/heavier than her), but 90 lbs on a kid who's like 4' 5" is like a concrete column. He even told me himself yesterday that he's not afraid of his mom because she's smaller than him. Combine that with the fat kid syndrome where he has to eat 3 of everything and you get somebody who yells instinctively when he doesn't get it

his way, or possibly even more pathetically, when somebody tries to stop him from dumping the whole bag of chocolate crackers into the box before we've even left the grocery store…

I don't know if I'm more appalled or disgusted by the fact that his fat fingers couldn't open the bottle of green apple flavored Miranda soda.

I'm seriously worried about this kid's future…aside from the fact that hes a spoiled ass…he's obsessed w/American stuff, but if this kid continues to eat like an American fatass, he's gonna become diabetic before he even becomes a teen. The other day, after his huge dinner, he had 3 really buttery pastries on top of whatever garbage he ate immediately beforehand(, not to mention the ice cream popsicle and chocolate covered crackers he had before lunch, and the box of chocolate crackers and cake that he ate before we got back from the grocery store(. His mom tried to stop him, but couldn't pry his fat arms away from shielding them, so she gave up, so instead, I got to watch him sit in only his underwear on the stool in front of the tv and watch his fat rolls jiggle as he leaned forward to stuff his face with a pastry. Yes, I know I'm being harsh, but this kid can be a huge brat (both literally and figuratively).

Then, the yesterday, I witnessed a fat kid rampage, except it was like I was watching youtube or something because it was so surreal. Just before he was gonna go to bed, he wanted to eat 3 white chocolate covered chocolate wafers, and his mom was telling him no, you can't do that. Then, somehow, he forgot to eat them right then and put them on the table and asked me to play Chinese checkers with him (saddest game ever. His pieces were halfway across the board when I won.) During the game, I was trying to be sneaky and threw the cover of the box on top of the wafers (individually prepackaged) and slid them off the table and under it while he was busy packing the game up afterwards. I thought I was home clear...

Nope, I guess you can't distract a fat kid from eating his cake. Right after he packed it, he went to the kitchen and grabbed three from the box. I followed him and was telling him, "don't eat three, you'll eat them all too quickly. Just have one today.", as I was trying to take the other two from his hands like how you see the negotiators and cops take a gun out of a criminal's hand, except his pudgy hands were kung-fu gripping them and he was like AHHHH　不行！！！　(It'd be more approp if that was like size 48 font). So I had to rip it from him and somehow I got them all back and put them back in the box. I don't know if he stepped back in shock that somebody just snatched something from him, but now that I was standing in between him and the wafers, he just stared at me really angrily, silently marched off to his room and slammed the door. Really hard—I felt the walls shake.

Instinctively, I moved the box because it was too easy to access (it was where all the snacks are) and I figured if he didn't see if everytime he went to get a snack, he wouldn't eat 3 every time—out of sight, out of mind, right? Wrong again. Less than three minutes later, he stampeded out of his room like an elephant (b/c the floors were vibrating), went to kitchen, yanked out the drawer and started yelling "WHERE ARE THEY? WHERE ARE THEY?" and went around the whole apt and searched every drawer and under every pillow. His mom was like, "You can't not eat them?" NO!! (again, size 48 font). Stupid fatty thought I threw them away and was like PAY (me for the box. Technically, he was yelling compensation, but who yells that…)…as if it was his money that he had spent at the grocery store.

It was everything you'd expect a short-tempered fat kingly kid to do when you take away his cake that it was almost scripted. Too bad it wasn't acting.