What is absurdity and where to look for it?

After arrival to China I bought a book of essays (zawen) by Yu Hua (余华). Just this Friday I was reading on my balcony (I am in love with my balcony after I have cleaned it) one of his essays about absurdity. I was surprised to see characters for Prague there. To illustrate absurdity he used a real story from Prague.

One of his friends, also Chinese writer at Prague writers’ festival, helped together with the main organizer of the festival and some other foreigner writers to catch a thief who stole a bag from the office of the main organizer. What followed was lengthy interrogation at Czech police (who had ever had to deal with Czech police knows), looking for disinterested translators and more. Funny to read, annoying to experience. He concludes, that Prague is still as absurd town as it used to be in Kafka’s times and that Kafka’s absurd style could be developed only in Prague.

I totally agree.

But I could not help myself to think … Yu Hua, did you really have to go that far for examples of absurdity? We are encountering absurdity here - in your motherland - on a daily basis. Facing bureaucracy, rules and regulations just for the sake of their existence and complicating lives of people.

In our dormitory we cannot use the stairs, but have to take elevator. This is already annoying because I live only on the 3^rd floor (Czech second floor) and the building has 18 floors. On a top of that, there is a new rule from this week on. Now, we have to swipe our room card every time we take the elevator. And from total four elevators which were operating, two are closed because they do not have this swipe card chip, so there is 50% more load of people on the other two elevators. Imagine how many people live in a 18 floor building.

One rainy day, I got wet while returning to the dorm on my bike, carrying bag and umbrella in my hands I got to the elevator with some other students and before I managed to find my room card I missed my 3^rd floor, of course. I got really angry that I decided to do something about it. I went to the reception and attacked the receptionist with a question why are the stairs always closed. I got an answer that it is for our 安全 safety. I argued back that it is nonsense, because the stairs are also emergency exits and what would than happen in a case of fire? After initial shock she told me that in a case of fire the guard would open the emergency exits. So, I asked whether in a case of fire this guard would climb up to the 18^th floor and then open all 2 emergency exists at each floor. She stared at me and asked me to come another day to complain with the manager of the building.

So, I went. And what was the manager’s answer? That this is a police’s regulation, and that the doors would automatically open in a case of fire. Well, I have very low trust in this, but she shut me up. I had nothing else to say. I lost this battle to access stairs… I hate the most common answer which I hear from authorities here: 不行 “not possible”. “Why?” “For your security.”

Another example is a curfew between 11 pm and 6 am in the dorms. That is also for student’s security. According to this regulation students should not leave dorm at night. In theory, if a student fail to come home before 11 pm., he or she would be locked out the dorm until morning. Yes, that is really secure. 

Well, in practice he or she would just get screamed by the angry guard who would open the door. Even my parents were not that strict if I remember correctly the high school times.

How many Kafkas must China have? I bet, that many …