The standard of living that can be enjoyed in this country by someone receiving the most paltry of American stipends is astonishing. I have about got over it, and begun to pinch pennies as usual, gripe about my rent, deny myself luxuries... when suddenly my bank statement arrives and I realize just how many renminbi I have at my disposal. Why (don't tell the government) I've hardly managed to spend half of my grant. I say this not to brag, because I know for sure it does not make me better than the people around me; it is merely an accident of currency exchange.
Say the rate were set at 2 RMB the dollar instead of 8 (which I think is about what it naturally ought to be). Then I would be living like a pauper without internet or AC, eating only the "economical" food in the cafeteria, and scraping money together to buy--or more likely photocopy--only the most necessary of books. Coffeeshops I would forgo entirely (Starbucks, in particular, is priced so that it still costs more for a cup of coffee than in the US, the smallest coffee of the day being 12 RMB, or $6 at the natural exchange rate!), and going out with friends would be a carefully rationed pleasure. Having my bicycle stolen would have been a significant loss, and buying a new one a matter for sharp bargaining.
In short, despite my naturally parsimonious nature, in small ways during my time here I have lived like a king. Yesterday, after some hesitation, I bought a fine $3 black tanktop, decent quality too. A few days ago, again after a pause, I finally made up my mind to buy an expensive 7-volume set of books which I had been going back and forth about all year--what's in them is high quality, but the printing isn't; they're a flimsyish paper-back edition. But the problem is that they're not going to be reprinted in hardback anytime soon, and having them photocopyied from the library (which would cut the price in half) seems a bit embarrassing. I mean, it's seven volumes we're talking about here. (I should add that copyright is nothing here. A copy shop will happily undertake to photocopy a whole book for you by tomorrow, and bind it nicely too. It is one of the most charming things about being a scholar here, say I.) So I just wander in and buy the thing, and a 25% discount too, amounting to just over $50. I thought the clerk might swoon, but instead he paid me pretty compliments and did his best to be generally agreeable. My cell phone costs me about $5/month, TV less than that, internet my biggest regular expense outside of rent at $15/month. I would cheerfully treat friends to any meal they have a fancy for, whenever I get a chance... which is not often, but...
It is actually irksome sometimes to think of going back to the U.S., where a small slip-up in my health insurance paperwork has recently cost me over $400 (!!), and a website error while making our summer vacation plane tickets cost a cool $100 to change. The chance to live like a millionaire is not something everyone gets to enjoy, and it has been quite a marvel to enjoy it here. Only--the joy of it probably depends on my having lived in modest circumstances for so many years. Maybe luxuries like the above are things everyone enjoys in the U.S., even if they have to go into debt to do it. I actually have no perspective on this at all, I realize.
However, I have recently been listening to the librivox rendition of A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court, quite an amusing book even though I have identified one or two fatal flaws in the plot. Never mind, it was meant to be satirical, not historically accurate... Occasionally, as I trudge back and forth to school, the biting satire and infuriating and mildly endearing bravado of the Boss makes me chuckle a bit. But no part so far has made me laugh so hard as Chapter 32, "Dowley's Humiliation." I quote part of it here, because if you read it to the end you will see why it expresses so perfectly the feeling I have being here--though never would I do to anyone what the Boss most incomprehensibly does to Dowley (and seemingly for pure spite). To understand the background, by the way, you have to know that he and King Arthur are traveling about disguised as commoners, and are staying temporarily in the cottage of a rather humble couple, Marco son of Marco and his wife. The Boss invited the blacksmith (one of the wealthiest man in the area) and a few others to the house of the Marcos for dinner, and the boss has ordered some provisions from the store--goods to be brought on Saturday, and the bill to be sent on Sunday, the night of the dinner.
Dowley was in fine feather, and I early got him started, and then adroitly worked him around onto his own history for a text and himself for a hero, and then it was good to sit there and hear him hum. Self-made man, you know. They know how to talk. They do deserve more credit than any other breed of men, yes, that is true; and they are among the very first to find it out, too. He told how he had begun life an orphan lad without money and without friends able to help him; how he had lived as the slaves of the meanest master lived; how his day's work was from sixteen to eighteen hours long, and yielded him only enough black bread to keep him in a half-fed condition; how his faithful endeavors finally attracted the attention of a good blacksmith, who came near knocking him dead with kindness by suddenly offering, when he was totally unprepared, to take him as his bound apprentice for nine years and give him board and clothes and teach him the trade -- or "mystery" as Dowley called it. That was his first great rise, his first gorgeous stroke of fortune; and you saw that he couldn't yet speak of it without a sort of eloquent wonder and delight that such a gilded promotion should have fallen to the lot of a common human being. He got no new clothing during his apprenticeship, but on his graduation day his master tricked him out in spang-new tow-linens and made him feel unspeakably rich and fine.
"I remember me of that day!" the wheelwright sang out, with enthusiasm.
"And I likewise!" cried the mason. "I would not believe they were thine own; in faith I could not."
"Nor other!" shouted Dowley, with sparkling eyes. "I was like to lose my character, the neighbors wending I had mayhap been stealing. It was a great day, a great day; one forgetteth not days like that."
Yes, and his master was a fine man, and prosperous, and always had a great feast of meat twice in the year, and with it white bread, true wheaten bread; in fact, lived like a lord, so to speak. And in time Dowley succeeded to the business and married the daughter.
"And now consider what is come to pass," said he, impressively. "Two times in every month there is fresh meat upon my table." He made a pause here, to let that fact sink home, then added -- "and eight times salt meat."
"It is even true," said the wheelwright, with bated breath.
"I know it of mine own knowledge," said the mason, in the same reverent fashion.
"On my table appeareth white bread every Sunday in the year," added the master smith, with solemnity. "I leave it to your own consciences, friends, if this is not also true?"
"By my head, yes," cried the mason.
"I can testify it -- and I do," said the wheelwright.
"And as to furniture, ye shall say yourselves what mine equipment is. " He waved his hand in fine gesture of granting frank and unhampered freedom of speech, and added: "Speak as ye are moved; speak as ye would speak; an I were not here."
"Ye have five stools, and of the sweetest workmanship at that, albeit your family is but three," said the wheelwright, with deep respect.
"And six wooden goblets, and six platters of wood and two of pewter to eat and drink from withal," said the mason, impressively. "And I say it as knowing God is my judge, and we tarry not here alway, but must answer at the last day for the things said in the body, be they false or be they sooth."
"Now ye know what manner of man I am, brother Jones," said the smith, with a fine and friendly condescension, "and doubtless ye would look to find me a man jealous of his due of respect and but sparing of outgo to strangers till their rating and quality be assured, but trouble yourself not, as concerning that; wit ye well ye shall find me a man that regardeth not these matters but is willing to receive any he as his fellow and equal that carrieth a right heart in his body, be his worldly estate howsoever modest. And in token of it, here is my hand; and I say with my own mouth we are equals -- equals "-- and he smiled around on the company with the satisfaction of a god who is doing the handsome and gracious thing and is quite well aware of it.
The king took the hand with a poorly disguised reluctance, and let go of it as willingly as a lady lets go of a fish; all of which had a good effect, for it was mistaken for an embarrassment natural to one who was being called upon by greatness.
The dame brought out the table now, and set it under the tree. It caused a visible stir of surprise, it being brand new and a sumptuous article of deal. But the surprise rose higher still when the dame, with a body oozing easy indifference at every pore, but eyes that gave it all away by absolutely flaming with vanity, slowly unfolded an actual simon-pure tablecloth and spread it. That was a notch above even the blacksmith's domestic grandeurs, and it hit him hard; you could see it. But Marco was in Paradise; you could see that, too. Then the dame brought two fine new stools -- whew! that was a sensation; it was visible in the eyes of every guest. Then she brought two more -- as calmly as she could. Sensation again -- with awed murmurs. Again she brought two -- walking on air, she was so proud. The guests were petrified, and the mason muttered:
"There is that about earthly pomps which doth ever move to reverence."
As the dame turned away, Marco couldn't help slapping on the climax while the thing was hot; so he said with what was meant for a languid composure but was a poor imitation of it:
"These suffice; leave the rest."
So there were more yet! It was a fine effect. I couldn't have played the hand better myself.
From this out, the madam piled up the surprises with a rush that fired the general astonishment up to a hundred and fifty in the shade, and at the same time paralyzed expression of it down to gasped "Oh's" and "Ah's," and mute upliftings of hands and eyes. She fetched crockery -- new, and plenty of it; new wooden goblets and other table furniture; and beer, fish, chicken, a goose, eggs, roast beef, roast mutton, a ham, a small roast pig, and a wealth of genuine white wheaten bread. Take it by and large, that spread laid everything far and away in the shade that ever that crowd had seen before. And while they sat there just simply stupefied with wonder and awe, I sort of waved my hand as if by accident, and the storekeeper's son emerged from space and said he had come to collect.
"That's all right," I said, indifferently. "What is the amount? give us the items."
Then he read off this bill, while those three amazed men listened, and serene waves of satisfaction rolled over my soul and alternate waves of terror and admiration surged over Marco's:
2 pounds salt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
8 dozen pints beer, in the wood . . . . . 800
3 bushels wheat . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,700
2 pounds fish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
3 hens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
1 goose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
3 dozen eggs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
1 roast of beef . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450
1 roast of mutton . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
1 ham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 800
1 sucking pig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500
2 crockery dinner sets . . . . . . . . . 6,000
2 men's suits and underwear . . . . . . . 2,800
1 stuff and 1 linsey-woolsey gown
and underwear . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,600
8 wooden goblets . . . . . . . . . . . . 800
Various table furniture . . . . . . . . .10,000
1 deal table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000
8 stools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,000
2 miller guns, loaded . . . . . . . . . . 3,000
He ceased. There was a pale and awful silence. Not a limb stirred. Not a nostril betrayed the passage of breath.
"Is that all?" I asked, in a voice of the most perfect calmness.
"All, fair sir, save that certain matters of light moment are placed together under a head hight sundries. If it would like you, I will sepa --"
"It is of no consequence," I said, accompanying the words with a gesture of the most utter indifference; "give me the grand total, please."
The clerk leaned against the tree to stay himself, and said:
"Thirty-nine thousand one hundred and fifty milrays!"
The wheelwright fell off his stool, the others grabbed the table to save themselves, and there was a deep and general ejaculation of:
"God be with us in the day of disaster!"
The clerk hastened to say:
"My father chargeth me to say he cannot honorably require you to pay it all at this time, and therefore only prayeth you --"
I paid no more heed than if it were the idle breeze, but, with an air of indifference amounting almost to weariness, got out my money and tossed four dollars on to the table. Ah, you should have seen them stare!
The clerk was astonished and charmed. He asked me to retain one of the dollars as security, until he could go to town and -- I interrupted:
"What, and fetch back nine cents? Nonsense! Take the whole. Keep the change."
There was an amazed murmur to this effect:
"Verily this being is MADE of money! He throweth it away even as if it were dirt."
The blacksmith was a crushed man.
The clerk took his money and reeled away drunk with fortune. I said to Marco and his wife:
"Good folk, here is a little trifle for you" -- handing the miller-guns as if it were a matter of no consequence, though each of them contained fifteen cents in solid cash; and while the poor creatures went to pieces with astonishment and gratitude, I turned to the others and said as calmly as one would ask the time of day:
"Well, if we are all ready, I judge the dinner is. Come, fall to."
***
By which you can see that the Boss is as silly a man as the blacksmith, only he is not made to pay for it. And at heart I am as silly as both of them, for producing four dollars and scorning the nine cents change--I confess I have just the same feeling, and the Boss's satisfaction rings true to my own secret heart. But you mustn't begrudge me it as it will all come to an end quite soon and I will go back to being a pauper again and cursing because my green onions--my god, in the U.S. they may cost as much as 12 RMB. It's highway robbery! And a fine dinner for two will set me back not ten dollars but fifty. Ah, alas. But I have enjoyed this aspect of life here, at least, and enjoyed the idea of it even more, if that makes any sense.
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