BEIJING – After a scrumptious dinner of dog hot pot Friday afternoon,
I stopped into the campus bowling alley to watch part of the annual
International Students Bowling Competition.
Normally I avoid these Foreign Students Office organized activities,
as they usually consist of awkward conversations, extremely obvious
cultural events (tea ceremonies, Beijing opera videos, trips to the
tourist trap section of the Great Wall, Badaling) and people asking me
questions about the National Basketball League.
None of that happened today. Instead I found out who would be on the
Security Council if hard power was measured by bowling skills.
Indonesia would be a superpower, along with Kazakhstan and South
Korea. The flaky North Koreans would be a significant threat – but
their inconsistency would make unreliable. Americans talk a good game,
and look pretty good while playing, but the result is pretty terrible:
sixth place, behind Vietnam.
The organizers went for maximum comic effect when choosing teams to
share lanes: United States vs. Vietnam, Japan vs. China, Malaysia vs.
Singapore and Kazakhstan vs. North Korea. The last one isn't that
funny, but I choose to watch the match from that side of the room. One
surprise of this semester is the discover that Kazazhstan produces
such beautiful women. If the Tsinghua contingent is an accurate
indicator Astana is crawling with six-foot, fit women with tan faces
and long, dark hair.
I also wanted to get a closer look at the North Koreans. China
sponsors hundreds of students from the Hermit Kingdom to study here,
enabling communication between the two countries who have a
relationship they used to describe as "teeth and mouth." They live in
the foreign student dorms, but no one hears much about them. There are
rumors they are ordered not to speak with white students, and anyone
caught breaking the rule faces immediate deportation and punishment
back home.
The country's contingent was four players, all short men in their late
20s or early 30s. The dullness of their clothes stood out. Each player
wore solid shirt, one a white button-shirt, another a teal T-shirt
tucked into a pair of blue trousers. The clothes didn't look old, just
unfashionable. There were no concession to the maximalist designs in
fashion across East Asia: bright colors, extra buttons, zippers and
clips, shirts with random chunks of English text and fractured
collages. These clothes were utilitarian, a physical manifestation of
the country's Juche philosophy – plain, unadorned outfits that reflect
the conditions of the masses.
There were traces of juche in the way they bowled. A man in a short
sleeve shirt the color of sunflower petals always approached the lane
with the same three steps, releasing the ball at the precisely the
right time, finishing with his right hand pointing toward 10 o'clock,
a pose straight out of a bowling magazine. His technique was
incredibly mechanical, as if he'd learned to bowl by studying a book
and emulated the positions shown in instructional pictures. Perhaps he
had.
The bowlers had no problem getting down eight or nine pins. Their
balls went straight, usually hitting the center pin. But they couldn't
modify their carefully practice strokes enough to get a spare, and
they lacked the experience to consistently get strikes. They lost to a
Kazakh team which the players threw the ball down the lane any way
they thought of: one player consistently used bounces to get the pins
down. Juche wasn't enough.
I didn't get a chance to talk with the North Koreans. As one player
walked to the bathroom, I muttered a "ni hao" and a smile. In response
he nodded his head, not breaking the rules and talking to an American,
but just possibly making a friendly gesture.
