Meg Stivison is a former Jersey girl now living in Beijing. She moved to Yantai, Shandong province in 2006, with plans to spend a year teaching ESL and exploring a new country, but got hooked on the amazing pace of change in China. She’s fascinated and amused by the clash of East and West in everyday expat life, and is pleased to join the discussion at CNReviews. Meg has written on computer gaming and game culture for Bleech magazine, WomenGamers.com, and others, with a personal blog at Violet Eclipse. (Sorry, China residents, it’s on Blogspot, if you have trouble, try using this link instead.) I’m pleased to have Meg guest blogging on CN Reviews — I am a Meg fanboy! - Elliott
Instead of learning to ask where the bathroom is located or what time the train leaves, my most vital Chinese questions are “Where’s the net cafe?” and “How much per hour?”When I lived in Yantai, the net bar down the street was my link to my friends back home (and, uh, WarCraft), but it was completely different from the air-conditioned hangout with wifi and coffee drinks back home. Chinese net bars sell computer time by the hour, and most also sell juice, soda, candy, snacks, and instant noodles, the Chinese equivalent of a Hot Pocket. You can also buy cigarettes, smoking isn’t just permitted in net bars, at times I think it’s mandatory.
The library-like silence of an American net cafe is gone, replaced with the usual thousand-decibel cellphone conversations, Tudou or Youtube videos, and shouts from the boys playing CounterStrike. It might not be the most conductive environment for working, especially when compared with the headphones-wearing crowd back home, but the cheery shouts of videogame victory don’t need translation. It’s familiar background noise to a gamer far from home.
My local net bars in Yantai and now in Beijing, are almost entirely populated by the stereotypical young, male gamer. Young men in desperate need of a haircut, staring blearily at the screen for literally hours or even days on end, is a familiar sight from my college days. Gamers ignoring the outside world are hardly unique to China, but the situation is especially focused in China.
First, Chinese teenagers spend their weekday evenings doing homework for the next day, and cramming for exams. Weekends are a little better, but there’re still hours devoted to homework and exam cramming, as well as squeezing in any extracurriculars like English class or piano lessons. There just isn’t enough time to kick back with a few hours of blowing up your friends online!
On a national holiday, my studious friends have an uninterrupted vacation to get some serious gaming in. The intense attention span that students used to cram for exams is now turned to World of WarCraft. I can’t blame them… I definitely spent my share of spring break and winter vacation time sitting in front of the computer. But a few days of solid gaming, coupled with a steady diet of candy bars and instant noodles, can take a physical toll.
Why aren’t there girls? Is it the smoke? Is it the trash-talking over shooters? I wonder if home computers are up to the task of blogging and QQ, but gamers (usually male) need the net cafe’s PCs for system-intensive games, and the chance to blow up their friends in person. I have seen women in ‘net bars, even playing games, but like girl gamers in the US, they’re a rarity.
The packets of sunflower seeds replacing a tall cafe mocha is just decoration. For a gamer in a strange land, a teenage boy wolfing down his snack in a hurry to get back to his game is a recognizable scene. There’s no culture shock in the virtual world, or the gaming subculture. Some things, it seems, are universal. What’s the Chinese word for pwn?
