Hugs

Three seconds is the average length of a hug between two people, particularly of the French kiss-kiss variety; um on the right, um on the left, merci beaucoup. Studies show something fantastic about hugging. When a hug lasts 20 seconds, the body and mind responds warmly. A sincere hug produces oxytocin, aka love hormone, which benefits physical and mental health. It relaxes us and makes us feel safe; it calms our fears, and reduces our anxieties. It also puts a smile on your tickle.

Northern Europeans are stereotyped to make a gesture of familiarity with a nod, cold and from a distance but no contact. The Arabs shake hands to show that they do not have a dagger in their hands. To honor the sovereign in Baghdad of old, one bowed low to expose the nape, the most vulnerable part of one’s body susceptible to a fatal blow. Iberian folks hug; the abrazo comes tight. Italians even give their prey the kiss of death! They are sensual in instinct, passionate in intuition, expansive in intelligence, and overt in intent.

One thing I’ve noticed of Barack and Michelle Obama: they hug people. Not a bad trait but I always stereotyped it as being an African-American thingy. So the Obamas hug, big deal, until China’s Prime Minister Li Keqiang and his wife Cheng Hong in their last trip to Africa hugged their hosts. No, they were not just responding to someone else’s hug, if you are thinking of the African thing. They actually embraced folks a full three seconds long, or longer.

We are writing this as if we’ve just discovered something revelatory. Well, we have. I remember a Pilipino family on Saipan, frequent company when their family and mine were both invited by a Swiss-Papuan couple for dinner at their home, so I got familiar with their children. Later, I had the eldest two in my 6th grade class at SVES, first the boy and then the younger girl. The boy was quiet and on the rotund side so nothing spectacular happened personally and academically.

The girl, on the other hand, was bubbly but unruly in a naughty way, negligent on academic matters. On the petite side, she found ways to lead others to what “we adults” considered rebellious mischiefs. I had a high threshold of tolerance for her antics in deference to her parents, and one day, feeling fatherly, I called on her on the assigned reading in Social Studies. I walked to her desk and stood by her side. When she did not answer my question, leading me to believe that she did not prepare her homework, I reached out to try to pat her on the head to say, “It’s OK, but please be prepared the next time,” when she suddenly bolted up and said: “Don’t you dare touch me!”

Whoa! Yeah, I know. This is public school America and with the abundant abuses of pedophiles and freaks, I could understand, but in 2007, I was stunned. She was right. I dare not touch her, never mind that I kootchie-kootchie-cooed her chin when she was a child. Touching was verboten in the first decade of this century at SVES on Saipan.

A decade earlier, I attended a conference in Washington, D.C. where delegates from all over the country, almost a thousand of us, were feted with afternoon sandwiches on the White House lawn (no dinner; bigwigs, we were not) when Bill Clinton and Al Gore came bounding into a cordoned space where we were not allowed to touch. They waved!

In the last three years at a university in China, the only time I felt a student’s touch was when a few came up to say “goodbye” at the last session and expressed appreciation that I treated them as adults, not a common practice where students are herded like cattle in the corral. Their hug of more than three seconds was definitely un-Chinese. So, to watch the country’s Prime Minister and his wife on the world stage giving everyone and returning everybody’s hug, I was not displeased! The PM and his wife have evidently decided to shift some paradigms.

I also found out that both the President, the PM, and another of the seven members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo—that’s three out of seven—forbids anyone in a meeting from giving a printed position paper or express a thought by reading from a prepared text. This held true in delivering a speech, a speaker admonished to keep eye contact with the audience rather than simply read a prepared speech, as was the previous practice.

Soon to be 69 and nor shy on the touchy-feely lifestyle, I did not think I would see the day. Think of former President Hu Jintao delivering a two-hour speech, head swiveling from left to right, while a whole room of more than 2,000 people followed closely on a printed text. Former PM Wen Jiabao extemporated, but he was considered flighty though revered, lightweight though popular, naïve but loved. Now comes his deputy Li Keqiang reflecting the norm, the new norm. Speak your mind, or do not bother to speak. And while you are at it, hug!

I won’t go that far on the panda, though. The cross between a bear and a wild cat, after seeing its kind in the Sichuan’s wild, is best kept at a distance! On the other hand, of the porcelain dolls on the subway…