A Chinese Worker
Over the months I have come to know a person who works in our area, who is both interesting and in some ways typical of a class or workers that one meets here. She does indoor cleaning as well as yard work and various other duties for which she receives the equivalent of less than $100 USD per month. She's on the job 5 or 6 days per week pretty much from 8 a.m. till about 5 p.m. with the an extended lunch/rest time (休息) that used to be typical but that fewer and fewer workers now get. She and her husband are both from the countryside around the middle of the province, and while all of her siblings have left the farm to work in the city, her husband is the only one of his siblings to do so. He's a construction worker and is now in charge of a small construction team for a bigger company so probably does a little bit better, though construction workers of rural origin are typically not well paid for very hard work and very long hours. They are both probably in their early-mid 40s and have one son, who is 12 years old. She knows a bit of English and uses it with the foreigners she encounters on the job. In short, the folks she works for are lucky to have such a person for so little money. On top of that she is incredibly conscientious and energetic about her cleaning work, reflecting her rural upbringing—fearless in the face of hard work.
There is probably one way in which she is not typical: she finished senior high school and did 2 years of further of study, which could have qualified her to teach primary school. She was not very informative about why she didn't get that kind of job, but I suspect that one of the reasons is that it's much more competitive to get that kind of work in the city as opposed to being back in the village, and for the sake of her son it's better to be a cleaning person in the city than a primary school teacher in the village. There's a lot riding on this 12-year old boy. She has definite plans for college for him and possibly an eventual Ph.D. She asked me if I would spend a little time with him once in preparation for an English langauge speech contest competition. I agreed and was impressed that this 12-year old could function as well as he did in a foreign language. Indeed, he was first in his school but didn't progress to the next level in competition with students from other schools. His mother said it was because his school was less prestigious, suggesting that the students are not as good, though the pecking order might well have influenced the judges' opinions.
Social class is something we have talked about and something that, like most urban workers from the countryside, she is keenly aware of. She has mentioned feeling looked down on for her job and her rural origins even though she is obviously very intelligent and more intellectually alert than lots of professors I know. During several conversations, she has mentioned my treating her as an equal (给我平等), which prompted me to mention my own class background and my political beliefs that this is her due and not a matter of anything I bestow on her out of some manner of kindness.
She is well read and has well-informed opinions on many issues. She doesn't read the mainline newpapers but tries to get information from various sources to triangulate what the truth might be. She opposes the death penalty, a minority view in China, and is very concerned about the environment. Her views about the US are quite positive to the point of being generous perhaps, but she quite correctly sees Americans as more concerned about the environment and more governed by laws than personal relations. During the 17th National Communist Party Congress meeting back in October she was hopeful to hear the "leaders" (领导人) talk about issues like the environment, inflation and rural development, but at the same time blasts them as corrupt and untrustworthy. I told her of my experiences in the countryside sleeping on a kang (炕) with a whole family and shitting in their common hole and such things, and she laughed that one of these people would never do that (not any more than George Bush or Bill Clinton would either). In spite of her mistrust of such people, she seems to be resigned as most are here that these people make the policy decisions and people like her are pretty much left to hoping for the best from them.
Recently we had a really interesting discussion about rural and agricultural issues. This really got her going. She feels that the biggest issue in the country is the plight of farmers. Since she grew up in a rural village and now lives in a city she knows both, but city people don't have a clue about what the countryside is about and most of the political and economic power is now in their hands. She said they wouldn't be able to tell a corn stalk from wheat. Of course, I egged her on and she agreed with me that the national government probably had no real intention of improving the rural economy or rural living conditions and was probably far more interested in getting more and more rural people into urban factories to produce goods for big export profit.
One thing that really set her off was coal mining deaths, which probably number around seven or so per day across the country. Quite recently there was one explosion that killed 180 some miners. As a person of rural origin, she said that she knows that it's the desperately poorest of the poor rural people who go down into the mines. Everyone knows the risk and no one goes unless there are no other choices. The compensation that they receive after getting killed is the biggest insult of all. She doesn't believe at all the stats that come on the TV about the numbers of miners' deaths and believes it's much worse than what gets reported.
She had lots of interesting things to say about local farming. She said that it used to be that the farmers in her area could drill down 3 meters to get ground water to pump for irrigation and now it's 10. (One student told me in her area they have to drill 30 meters now. No wonder I see so many posters in the countryside for well drilling. It must be big business.) Also, there used to be about 2 to 3 feet of snow in winter, but in recent years there has hardly been a few inches. Thus, farmers have to pump and irrigate even more as a result of the lack of snow for winter wheat and the ground water is hardly being replenished at all.
Chemical fertilizer is another issue. Nowadays farmers don't want to raise pigs and cows and use the fertilizer on their fields. It's easier just to use chemical fertilizer. Yields keep going up but the soil is depleted more every year. I told her that one Minnesota farm boy once told me that the soil in his southern family farm didn't do a damn thing except hold up the crop. Everything else comes from Monsanto or whatever.
She decries all the investment in planes and high tech hardware and whatever at the expense of agriculture. If agriculture collapses, what will all these people eat? She feels that no matter what "development" comes about there will still be more workers than engineers so why aren't the lives of workers being attended to? She had all kinds of stats that she was firing at me about how many people per hectare and stats about the loss of agricultural land and how she doesn't believe what the government puts out about these issues. Even if I were a trained stenographer and native speaker I could not have kept up with her. Inflation was another big issue. Her rural-urban experience tells her that both urban consumers and small scale rural producers are taking a hit. What she pays from shopping everyday does not jibe with the inflation numbers she hears on the evening news. It just ain't so.
Our last conversation ended with the usual grimmaces and head shakes accompanied by the very common phrase 没办法, meibanfa, 'no way,' 'no solution,' 'it can't be helped.’ It seems to be descriptive of so many situations, and not just in China. From the price of peanuts in Henan to the Iraq war, it seems that someone is always taking some links out of your chain, cutting down your running room, giving you more comps to corrrect and adding the earnings from your sweat and your sleepless nights to their travel money. 肯定有办法. There has to be a way.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Christmas in Xinxiang
Christmas in Xinxiang
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Xinxiang. Trips downtown over the past two weekends have revealed some evidence of capitalist Christmas in Xinxiang, something totally unheard of in years past. Of course, it all has to do with promoting shopping. A couple of stores have life-size Santas in the windows and one of them is playing a sax out in front of the store as Jingle Bells wanders into the street from somewhere inside. Of course, the stores with this Christmas hype are the more upscale places, where both customers and owners alike are just looking for one more excuse to buy and sell. In the biggest stores, all of the check out and sales staff, virtually all young women, are wearing red elf or Santa hats or whatever. I've seen literally hundreds of them in the past week or so. There was even one comely young woman totally in red velvet with a mock ermine trim cape at one sales station, and I was wondering what was so special about her get-up until she turned around and I saw Coca Cola embroidered in white across the back of the cape. Many other downtown stores have snow flakes, tinsel, streamers, trees and Santa faces taped to the windows.
In fact, the Christmas spirit has belatedly migrated from downtown to other parts of the city. Even our local department store, the Star Market (the title appears in both English and Chinese), has its clerks wearing Christmas caps, though these young (and not so young) ladies are less dolled up than their downtown counterparts. The neighborhood store even has a scrawny plastic Christmas tree right inside the entrance. The campus guest house next door also has fancy Santa faces taped to the restaurant doors with "Xmas" across Santa's chubby face and beard. A nice touch. I was out for a walk the other day and saw that one of the local internet bars also had Santa faces taped to its doors. Old Saint Nick's likeness happened to be right under the sign that said "No admittance to those under 18 years of age." Good advice for those venturing into capitalist Christmas. Caveat emptor.
For sure the biggest displays were at the city's biggest department store, Pang Dong Lai (胖东来). This store has everything you could expect to buy before Christmas in the upscale shopping districts of the Twin Cities except it's just more concentrated due to the fact that the number of people who can afford such stuff is smaller. There are Hong Kong jewelers, French wines (Bordeaux for about $25 US—I passed), European watches and plenty of brand name clothes. In the basement one can find a lavish food store with many fancy things hard to get elsewhere. It very much reminded me of similar places in Kobe or Taipei complete with an extensive food court. It's the one place where we can get nice western style bread and butter as well. There are sweepers and moppers constantly moving around in the crowds getting up every bit of trash and every stain from the highly polished floors. Target managers would be envious.
The characters in the name of Pang Dong Lai literally mean 'fat' 'east' 'come,' "Fatness Comes to the East," referring to the idea, I would guess, that China—the heart of the East—has arrived. Fat city is here, at least for some. How appropriate to connect it with Christmas, the ultimate fat city for sellers around the world and now for China as well.
A few days ago the local newspaper had an interesting article on the phenomenon of Christmas decoration shopping. They quoted one "happy" manager, who reported that the sales of Christmas items are going up every year. "Christmas is getting closer to the common people (老百姓) every year," he said. He noted that it used to be only stores that that bought Christmas decorations, but now average people are also buying them up. The place was hopping with people who were "wondering if this Santa sings or how many snowflakes are in that package." About half the article talked about how most of the Christmas articles were shoddy or even potentially toxic without indications of who made them or where they were made—Disney toys from Haiti perhaps!? In any case the reporter indicated that these issues were not of concern to the enthusiastic shoppers s/he spoke to.
Needless to say there are no religious items or themes in evidence, not because China is a godless communist country, but more likely just because there's no money to be made in selling them. But that day may not be far off.
On a personal note, this is not my first Christmas in China, but maybe because there's just one other American working here or just because we are thousands of miles from the hard core source of Christmas hype, I seem totally unaffected by it. We're far from family and the 25th is just another work day and my stacks of essays are even higher as the semester draws to a close in two weeks—not much time for the holiday spirit. Anyway, on the bright side, there are still 367 shopping days till Christmas of 2008. Happy Holidays!
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Xinxiang. Trips downtown over the past two weekends have revealed some evidence of capitalist Christmas in Xinxiang, something totally unheard of in years past. Of course, it all has to do with promoting shopping. A couple of stores have life-size Santas in the windows and one of them is playing a sax out in front of the store as Jingle Bells wanders into the street from somewhere inside. Of course, the stores with this Christmas hype are the more upscale places, where both customers and owners alike are just looking for one more excuse to buy and sell. In the biggest stores, all of the check out and sales staff, virtually all young women, are wearing red elf or Santa hats or whatever. I've seen literally hundreds of them in the past week or so. There was even one comely young woman totally in red velvet with a mock ermine trim cape at one sales station, and I was wondering what was so special about her get-up until she turned around and I saw Coca Cola embroidered in white across the back of the cape. Many other downtown stores have snow flakes, tinsel, streamers, trees and Santa faces taped to the windows.
In fact, the Christmas spirit has belatedly migrated from downtown to other parts of the city. Even our local department store, the Star Market (the title appears in both English and Chinese), has its clerks wearing Christmas caps, though these young (and not so young) ladies are less dolled up than their downtown counterparts. The neighborhood store even has a scrawny plastic Christmas tree right inside the entrance. The campus guest house next door also has fancy Santa faces taped to the restaurant doors with "Xmas" across Santa's chubby face and beard. A nice touch. I was out for a walk the other day and saw that one of the local internet bars also had Santa faces taped to its doors. Old Saint Nick's likeness happened to be right under the sign that said "No admittance to those under 18 years of age." Good advice for those venturing into capitalist Christmas. Caveat emptor.
For sure the biggest displays were at the city's biggest department store, Pang Dong Lai (胖东来). This store has everything you could expect to buy before Christmas in the upscale shopping districts of the Twin Cities except it's just more concentrated due to the fact that the number of people who can afford such stuff is smaller. There are Hong Kong jewelers, French wines (Bordeaux for about $25 US—I passed), European watches and plenty of brand name clothes. In the basement one can find a lavish food store with many fancy things hard to get elsewhere. It very much reminded me of similar places in Kobe or Taipei complete with an extensive food court. It's the one place where we can get nice western style bread and butter as well. There are sweepers and moppers constantly moving around in the crowds getting up every bit of trash and every stain from the highly polished floors. Target managers would be envious.
The characters in the name of Pang Dong Lai literally mean 'fat' 'east' 'come,' "Fatness Comes to the East," referring to the idea, I would guess, that China—the heart of the East—has arrived. Fat city is here, at least for some. How appropriate to connect it with Christmas, the ultimate fat city for sellers around the world and now for China as well.
A few days ago the local newspaper had an interesting article on the phenomenon of Christmas decoration shopping. They quoted one "happy" manager, who reported that the sales of Christmas items are going up every year. "Christmas is getting closer to the common people (老百姓) every year," he said. He noted that it used to be only stores that that bought Christmas decorations, but now average people are also buying them up. The place was hopping with people who were "wondering if this Santa sings or how many snowflakes are in that package." About half the article talked about how most of the Christmas articles were shoddy or even potentially toxic without indications of who made them or where they were made—Disney toys from Haiti perhaps!? In any case the reporter indicated that these issues were not of concern to the enthusiastic shoppers s/he spoke to.
Needless to say there are no religious items or themes in evidence, not because China is a godless communist country, but more likely just because there's no money to be made in selling them. But that day may not be far off.
On a personal note, this is not my first Christmas in China, but maybe because there's just one other American working here or just because we are thousands of miles from the hard core source of Christmas hype, I seem totally unaffected by it. We're far from family and the 25th is just another work day and my stacks of essays are even higher as the semester draws to a close in two weeks—not much time for the holiday spirit. Anyway, on the bright side, there are still 367 shopping days till Christmas of 2008. Happy Holidays!
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Wednesdays with Bob
Wednesdays with Bob
Since about the 3rd week of the semester I have had open meetings with students for 2 hours on Wednesday afternoons for whoever wants to come to chat about anything. I was told by somebody in the English department that I didn't have to bother to do this, but I went ahead anyway. I actually had two motives. One was to head off having students come to the apartment because I just don't have the time given my work load. The second was that I really did want to have a chance to get students' views on things but on their own turf. If I just had an open house, only the most outgoing ones would come. I did it this way in Shengyang in the early 90s, and it worked out pretty well.
It has been interesting. The first week I had the most people, about 30, and the first comment/question was what book of the Bible I most recommended them to read. I actually gave a considered and somewhat detailed answer and then went on to tell them that while I thought that it was important to know about Christianity for purposes of understanding western culture, I myself was no longer a believer. I asked them if they were surprised, and indeed they were. Maybe the Christian crowd among the students thought that these sessions would or could be turned into a Bible study group. Well, I gave my reasons for not believing and then the discussion went on to why not believe if it can offer some comfort in this increasingly isolated and alienated post-modern world. My answer was simply that those energies would be better spent asking ourselves why modern society was like this and doing something about it—actively working on those problems instead of running to church (though I conceded that there were church goers doing both). I said I thought there were plenty of things we could start working on right now. However, there didn't seem to be a lot of enthusiasm for this approach. Anyway, that was the first and last of the visits of the Bible study group.
The other big contingent on that first day back in September was the get-rich-quick crowd. Did I want go get rich and isn't that the most important thing to do right now in China? Well, no, I didn't think that either and gave my reasons there too. In fact, quite a lot of young people enthusiastically buy into the idea of getting rich and becoming a philanthropist...a bit later in life, of course. However, it is also convenient to hold this view because it's the party line and government policy. Buying into the neoliberal export economy and letting some "get rich first" is presented as the quickest route to enriching the country. Lots of students embrace this and it's hard to criticize success. You can see the effects of 10 years of double-digit economic growth everywhere. Even in a hinterland place like Xinxiang there's new construction everywhere and lots of really nice stuff to buy. This was another case of not getting the expected answer from the American, so that was the last of that group as well.
Students are very interested in the US and curious about US attitudes about China. We have spent a good deal of time breaking down stereotypes about Americans: All Jews support Israel, all blacks are poor, all whites are well off, all Americans are Christians, etc. and other issues of race, class and gender. Students are anxious to travel and see the US and the world for themselves, but this group will have to do a good bit of waiting because they are not well off by any means or they would not be in this school. Snide comments about "high class Chinese" here or in the US are pretty well received. These students of largely rural origin know the meaning of social class and they don't have much use for such people.
I try to get them to be more realistic about the US as I have had to get more realistic about China. Each place has plenty of its own issues and some advantages, but the more I move back and forth the more I see similarities. I couldn't find answers for the problems of the US by coming here any more than they can solve the problems of China by assuming that they have already been solved in the US. The problems of both places are just variations on the same themes—income gaps, no health care, lack of democracy, assembly line education, social class, gender inequalities, indirect rule by a rich elite served by a political establishment, etc.
The students who continue to come on Wednesday afternoons are mostly those who are interested in these political, social and economic issues in the US and China and around the world. The discussions can get heavy and sometimes difficult or even discouraging. From student writing, I know lots are in la-la land or, more accurately, in a state of denial, but not those who are still coming to these discussions. Once a student even started crying from feeling so overwhelmed with the world's problems and the powerlessness she felt both as a Chinese citizen and as a single human being. The fact she could cry at least indicates a sensitivity which lots have discovered is most conveniently left behind. No wonder that only less than 10 still come.
There's a good bit of cynicism among some of them. We discussed rural education, which lags so far behind what's available in the city, and I said that the government could, for example, decide to pay rural teachers more, though I recognized that it wouldn't ever happen. But even the mention of the example of the government doing something like that just produced cynical sneers in some of these 19-year-olds. Many feel that while China had made stunning economic progress, it has regressed spiritually in many other ways. As an example, one mentioned that twenty years ago director Zhang Yimou was producing challenging reflective films but now is just turning out trash for cash.
I've mentioned several times in these group discussions my doubts about how long the US can stay on top of the world heap. This surprises them. The attitude here is that China can "cooperate" with the US to "develop" China for a long time to come. To the students the US seems pretty invincible though their hope is for a multi-polar world in the future rather than China somehow replacing the US as the new world power.
In some ways, I'm a little surprised they are not more on top if world news. But this is just another similarity between the countries. They are, of course, busy but also as cynical about news sources as their counterparts in the US as well both should be given the Judith Miller-NY Times cheerleading role before the Iraq war and the People's Daily going on about a new harmonious society that's just around the corner.
It's difficult. Maybe for these bright mostly female students it's the problem of being served up a China that's still a feudal cake with the recent addition of a frosting of capitalist consumerism decked out with a few churchy vigil light candles on top. Eat it or go hungry. The western menu is not so different.
Since about the 3rd week of the semester I have had open meetings with students for 2 hours on Wednesday afternoons for whoever wants to come to chat about anything. I was told by somebody in the English department that I didn't have to bother to do this, but I went ahead anyway. I actually had two motives. One was to head off having students come to the apartment because I just don't have the time given my work load. The second was that I really did want to have a chance to get students' views on things but on their own turf. If I just had an open house, only the most outgoing ones would come. I did it this way in Shengyang in the early 90s, and it worked out pretty well.
It has been interesting. The first week I had the most people, about 30, and the first comment/question was what book of the Bible I most recommended them to read. I actually gave a considered and somewhat detailed answer and then went on to tell them that while I thought that it was important to know about Christianity for purposes of understanding western culture, I myself was no longer a believer. I asked them if they were surprised, and indeed they were. Maybe the Christian crowd among the students thought that these sessions would or could be turned into a Bible study group. Well, I gave my reasons for not believing and then the discussion went on to why not believe if it can offer some comfort in this increasingly isolated and alienated post-modern world. My answer was simply that those energies would be better spent asking ourselves why modern society was like this and doing something about it—actively working on those problems instead of running to church (though I conceded that there were church goers doing both). I said I thought there were plenty of things we could start working on right now. However, there didn't seem to be a lot of enthusiasm for this approach. Anyway, that was the first and last of the visits of the Bible study group.
The other big contingent on that first day back in September was the get-rich-quick crowd. Did I want go get rich and isn't that the most important thing to do right now in China? Well, no, I didn't think that either and gave my reasons there too. In fact, quite a lot of young people enthusiastically buy into the idea of getting rich and becoming a philanthropist...a bit later in life, of course. However, it is also convenient to hold this view because it's the party line and government policy. Buying into the neoliberal export economy and letting some "get rich first" is presented as the quickest route to enriching the country. Lots of students embrace this and it's hard to criticize success. You can see the effects of 10 years of double-digit economic growth everywhere. Even in a hinterland place like Xinxiang there's new construction everywhere and lots of really nice stuff to buy. This was another case of not getting the expected answer from the American, so that was the last of that group as well.
Students are very interested in the US and curious about US attitudes about China. We have spent a good deal of time breaking down stereotypes about Americans: All Jews support Israel, all blacks are poor, all whites are well off, all Americans are Christians, etc. and other issues of race, class and gender. Students are anxious to travel and see the US and the world for themselves, but this group will have to do a good bit of waiting because they are not well off by any means or they would not be in this school. Snide comments about "high class Chinese" here or in the US are pretty well received. These students of largely rural origin know the meaning of social class and they don't have much use for such people.
I try to get them to be more realistic about the US as I have had to get more realistic about China. Each place has plenty of its own issues and some advantages, but the more I move back and forth the more I see similarities. I couldn't find answers for the problems of the US by coming here any more than they can solve the problems of China by assuming that they have already been solved in the US. The problems of both places are just variations on the same themes—income gaps, no health care, lack of democracy, assembly line education, social class, gender inequalities, indirect rule by a rich elite served by a political establishment, etc.
The students who continue to come on Wednesday afternoons are mostly those who are interested in these political, social and economic issues in the US and China and around the world. The discussions can get heavy and sometimes difficult or even discouraging. From student writing, I know lots are in la-la land or, more accurately, in a state of denial, but not those who are still coming to these discussions. Once a student even started crying from feeling so overwhelmed with the world's problems and the powerlessness she felt both as a Chinese citizen and as a single human being. The fact she could cry at least indicates a sensitivity which lots have discovered is most conveniently left behind. No wonder that only less than 10 still come.
There's a good bit of cynicism among some of them. We discussed rural education, which lags so far behind what's available in the city, and I said that the government could, for example, decide to pay rural teachers more, though I recognized that it wouldn't ever happen. But even the mention of the example of the government doing something like that just produced cynical sneers in some of these 19-year-olds. Many feel that while China had made stunning economic progress, it has regressed spiritually in many other ways. As an example, one mentioned that twenty years ago director Zhang Yimou was producing challenging reflective films but now is just turning out trash for cash.
I've mentioned several times in these group discussions my doubts about how long the US can stay on top of the world heap. This surprises them. The attitude here is that China can "cooperate" with the US to "develop" China for a long time to come. To the students the US seems pretty invincible though their hope is for a multi-polar world in the future rather than China somehow replacing the US as the new world power.
In some ways, I'm a little surprised they are not more on top if world news. But this is just another similarity between the countries. They are, of course, busy but also as cynical about news sources as their counterparts in the US as well both should be given the Judith Miller-NY Times cheerleading role before the Iraq war and the People's Daily going on about a new harmonious society that's just around the corner.
It's difficult. Maybe for these bright mostly female students it's the problem of being served up a China that's still a feudal cake with the recent addition of a frosting of capitalist consumerism decked out with a few churchy vigil light candles on top. Eat it or go hungry. The western menu is not so different.
Saturday, December 8, 2007
Still Seventy Percent Feudal
Still Seventy Percent Feudal
This is basically a report on some conversations with the director of the foreign affairs office here, a very lively personality with very good English, a good sense of humor and interesting insights into life in China.
After some various issues came up about why things depend so much on people rather than clear policies and straight answers, he explained that it is necessary to remember that China is still 70% feudal, by which he meant that it's a hierarchical culture of relations not of rules. Everything depends on who you know and who you have done things for and who has done things for you. People do things for reasons. There's always a catch. It's an eternal merry-go-round. Let's have dinner--can you judge the speech contest？ Let's have lunch—can you give a 2-hour lecture at the art conference—in 2 days?! This is the kind of thing that has been going on for a few thousand years more or less.
As for the other 30%, he considers 20% of it to be capitalist and 10% socialist. He is optimistic about change, but it's tempered with reality. He feels it will probably take some decades to get the feudalism down to 60% and the capitalism up to 30%. It was clear that he would consider that to be progress and that the eventual near total capitalization of the Chinese economy would be a positive thing.
I would almost surely take him to be a party member. One doesn't get that far without it, so it's simply a matter of practicality. However, he was very strong about how the down and outs of society need to be taken care of. I presume this is his 10% socialism, and it gives some insight into how such people think about the nature of socialism in China. He felt this needed to be done not out of political expediency but out of a sense of morality and justice. This might set him apart from many who would certainly do it only for the former reason. Knowing him fairly well, I feel comfortable taking him at his word. He's kind of carved out some space for himself by placating or at least dealing with those who must be dealt with so as to be able to do what he likes and feels in important. In short, he has more successful in doing what I never could accomplish in my own university days.
He's had things to say about Mao now and then. On this his view is pretty much that of most intelligentsia. Mao was right to put his finger on feudalism, i.e. patriarchal social class, as the root of the basic inequality between classes and genders in traditional Chinese society, but he dealt with it himself in a patriarchal way, like a traditional emperor issuing edicts. Even worse, according to the director, he did it in a way that messed things up so badly in China for 10 years that no has been willing to deal with it again since, making the last state in some ways worse than the first. Yet, for me, at least Mao did try to confront it directly, but today's elite are comfortable—yes, very comfortable—with the idea of just letting the ruling oligarchy deal with social class and gender inequalities indirectly by manipulating the economy or throwing bones at various interest groups as the need arises.
His background gives some insight into things. He grew up in the Zhengzhou, the provincial capital, and is young enough that his Cultural Revolution experience came through the eyes of a child with no bad personal experience. His father managed some kind of mess hall during those times, so there was always something to eat. He is clearly a city person, urbane but not the least arrogant. He told a joke about a country guy who came to Xinxiang with his young son, who, seeing the city for the first time, asked his father if this was Beijing. No, silly boy, the father replied, Beijing is in Zhengzhou!
Henan province has always had the reputation of being a rural rather backwater place. He said that even the university people used to be rather rough on the edges too, but have come some way since his early days. People have gotten a little more refinement. He told the story of some department chair or other who some years ago came into the business office to get his reimbursement money and just entered the room rudely shouting “Where's the money?” as if he were barking orders to a waitress (as people usually do even now). One of the clerks just raised her head and responded, “Oh, are you here to hold us up?” and then put her head back down to her work. I guess people no longer do such things. Progress.
He had a funny comparison between the economy and skirt lengths. He said when the economy is good skirt lengths get shorter, but if it takes a dive skirt lengths get long again because the conservatives will be back in power managing a strict top-down economy accompanied by hosts of other conservative attitudes and policies. I told him he should write it up for publication in an economic journal. I do believe it could be proven with statistical data. I don't think we'd be lacking in volunteers to gather the data about skirt lengths.
From a dinner with him I recall a funny pun about Chinese people looking forward to the qiantu (前途) ‘the future’ and qiantu (钱途) ‘the way of money’. There are so many things like this. I just wish I could catch faster and remember them better. I should have stuck with French.
At this same dinner he talked about world leaders like Bush and Hu Jintao. He thought that what makes such people succeed is not brains (responding to my comment that Hu probably had some whereas Bush had obviously been shortchanged) but just guts. This is what allows them to get what they want. In this context he went on to say that he thought the US had about another 50 or 100 years before it would slide, not to obscurity or into some cataclysmic implosion, but just to the natural end of its world dominance. Without saying so, he was probably reflecting what most Chinese feel about their own future in the world—slow and steady wins the race. I had no contradictory evidence to offer, at least not about the United States. Not with a bang but a whimper.
This is basically a report on some conversations with the director of the foreign affairs office here, a very lively personality with very good English, a good sense of humor and interesting insights into life in China.
After some various issues came up about why things depend so much on people rather than clear policies and straight answers, he explained that it is necessary to remember that China is still 70% feudal, by which he meant that it's a hierarchical culture of relations not of rules. Everything depends on who you know and who you have done things for and who has done things for you. People do things for reasons. There's always a catch. It's an eternal merry-go-round. Let's have dinner--can you judge the speech contest？ Let's have lunch—can you give a 2-hour lecture at the art conference—in 2 days?! This is the kind of thing that has been going on for a few thousand years more or less.
As for the other 30%, he considers 20% of it to be capitalist and 10% socialist. He is optimistic about change, but it's tempered with reality. He feels it will probably take some decades to get the feudalism down to 60% and the capitalism up to 30%. It was clear that he would consider that to be progress and that the eventual near total capitalization of the Chinese economy would be a positive thing.
I would almost surely take him to be a party member. One doesn't get that far without it, so it's simply a matter of practicality. However, he was very strong about how the down and outs of society need to be taken care of. I presume this is his 10% socialism, and it gives some insight into how such people think about the nature of socialism in China. He felt this needed to be done not out of political expediency but out of a sense of morality and justice. This might set him apart from many who would certainly do it only for the former reason. Knowing him fairly well, I feel comfortable taking him at his word. He's kind of carved out some space for himself by placating or at least dealing with those who must be dealt with so as to be able to do what he likes and feels in important. In short, he has more successful in doing what I never could accomplish in my own university days.
He's had things to say about Mao now and then. On this his view is pretty much that of most intelligentsia. Mao was right to put his finger on feudalism, i.e. patriarchal social class, as the root of the basic inequality between classes and genders in traditional Chinese society, but he dealt with it himself in a patriarchal way, like a traditional emperor issuing edicts. Even worse, according to the director, he did it in a way that messed things up so badly in China for 10 years that no has been willing to deal with it again since, making the last state in some ways worse than the first. Yet, for me, at least Mao did try to confront it directly, but today's elite are comfortable—yes, very comfortable—with the idea of just letting the ruling oligarchy deal with social class and gender inequalities indirectly by manipulating the economy or throwing bones at various interest groups as the need arises.
His background gives some insight into things. He grew up in the Zhengzhou, the provincial capital, and is young enough that his Cultural Revolution experience came through the eyes of a child with no bad personal experience. His father managed some kind of mess hall during those times, so there was always something to eat. He is clearly a city person, urbane but not the least arrogant. He told a joke about a country guy who came to Xinxiang with his young son, who, seeing the city for the first time, asked his father if this was Beijing. No, silly boy, the father replied, Beijing is in Zhengzhou!
Henan province has always had the reputation of being a rural rather backwater place. He said that even the university people used to be rather rough on the edges too, but have come some way since his early days. People have gotten a little more refinement. He told the story of some department chair or other who some years ago came into the business office to get his reimbursement money and just entered the room rudely shouting “Where's the money?” as if he were barking orders to a waitress (as people usually do even now). One of the clerks just raised her head and responded, “Oh, are you here to hold us up?” and then put her head back down to her work. I guess people no longer do such things. Progress.
He had a funny comparison between the economy and skirt lengths. He said when the economy is good skirt lengths get shorter, but if it takes a dive skirt lengths get long again because the conservatives will be back in power managing a strict top-down economy accompanied by hosts of other conservative attitudes and policies. I told him he should write it up for publication in an economic journal. I do believe it could be proven with statistical data. I don't think we'd be lacking in volunteers to gather the data about skirt lengths.
From a dinner with him I recall a funny pun about Chinese people looking forward to the qiantu (前途) ‘the future’ and qiantu (钱途) ‘the way of money’. There are so many things like this. I just wish I could catch faster and remember them better. I should have stuck with French.
At this same dinner he talked about world leaders like Bush and Hu Jintao. He thought that what makes such people succeed is not brains (responding to my comment that Hu probably had some whereas Bush had obviously been shortchanged) but just guts. This is what allows them to get what they want. In this context he went on to say that he thought the US had about another 50 or 100 years before it would slide, not to obscurity or into some cataclysmic implosion, but just to the natural end of its world dominance. Without saying so, he was probably reflecting what most Chinese feel about their own future in the world—slow and steady wins the race. I had no contradictory evidence to offer, at least not about the United States. Not with a bang but a whimper.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Students on Life
Students on Life
For the first writing assignments, I had students write a journal and then an essay on the topic “A Theme in My Life.” Without much luck I first had a discussion on Erich Fromm's idea of being and having to get them away from seeing their lives just in terms of a job. It was a failure. Without a single exception all 360 of them produced “journals” that were in fact canned essays on the jobs they wanted. A number noted that they had never been asked to think about their lives in this way, so maybe that was part of the problem, but mostly it was just the default mode kicking in. When it was time to turn the journals into essays, I remained very insistent that they go beyond the idea of describing a job to a reflection on what meaning or significance they hoped to give to their lives. They were free to bring in the jobs they hoped to get, but the jobs had to be a part of a larger theme.
I had some mild success. There were a number of common themes, which said some things about life in contemporary China for these students. First, it must be recalled that this is a provincial teachers college of 20,000 students, who are overwhelmingly first generation college. Maybe half are from small rural villages around the province; many others are the children of factory workers in some medium size cities with a minority being the children of K-12 teachers following in their parents' footsteps. What they had to say strongly reflects these conditions.
One theme, frequent but not the most common, was to get rich. Make lots of money by setting up your own export company or whatever, and then buy lots of nice stuff—cars, villas, clothes, travel, etc. Then the background kicks in. After you've made lots of money, indulge your parents, who maybe now go to work in the city after the planting or harvest to keep you in school. Buy them a nice villa too and take them around in your car and overseas with you on your trips. The next use for the money was to do something for the village—build a school, a road or a factory to give people good jobs. I was sometimes indelicate enough to write responses on journals wondering how the CEOs they want to emulate got so rich themselves. Was it not in fact by starting up factories employing rural school drop outs and paying them very little? I never got any answers. Maybe they took my questions to be rhetorical.
Another very common theme was to be a teacher at some level along the K-12 continuum. Clearly lots of students find the calling to be a teacher a noble one and look forward to being the kind of teacher that many of them were affected by—someone who went the extra mile to encourage them to hang in another year and take the college entrance exams again or whatever. They want to be the students' friends and confidants and advocates. Within this context and even in the one above, spending some years teaching in one the China's poor and remote provinces or in Africa as a volunteer was often mentioned. These aspirations were often part of a larger theme of wanting to become a person who is useful to society. While the way these goals were expressed often struck me as naïve or incredibly idealistic, I cannot say that they did not also remind me of some younger days when I had very similar and equally naïve hopes.
A desire for a simple, peaceful or "ordinary" life was a third rather common theme. Give me any kind of job that puts food on the table—I don't care what—but let me live in a natural remote place or do something that removes me from the competitive grasp of the new society, the corrupt politics, the smiling at people I don't respect and the constant looking over my shoulder. I think this feeling might come from the fact that many of them have already seen too much of what they don't like just from the struggle of getting a seat in college.
Other themes included descriptions of lives that would be interesting, challenging, colorful, varied, independent, happy, full of travel, etc. Using their English to be an interpreter for some jet-setting CEO or high official was often seen as a way of accomplishing these other goals. Some of the more career-minded writers mentioned graduate school, which is apparently all the rage now. "Everyone" wants a graduate degree, and a number of my students voiced interest in that as a way of getting a job teaching in college—good pay, job security and long vacations. Talk about naïvete. Well, maybe not if you can get some fat tenure track cake job.
Family was at the center of virtually all of these themes. Family in terms of parents and care for them was equally important as spousal relationships to these still single (mostly) women. Not a few of them began these conversations with phrases like "Because I'm a girl/daughter..." Many made comments about wanting to find a "lover" (爱人, airen, the term for 'spouse' that has been used in post-1949 China) who need not be handsome or rich but is a kind person, devoted and faithful to them. Children—one or two—were in all the pictures. Not one of the male students made a similar comment about trying to find such a woman.
I've heard people talk about how this generation of students feels terribly pressured and for this reason prone to some instability. I certainly see the pressure, but can't say I've yet seen evidence of any obvious instability. The school here has recently set up a counseling center and the challenge is to get students to use it because there is an assumption that people who get counseling are mentally ill, and there is considerable social stigma in China about mental illness, maybe like the US in the 50s. Another issue is that so many of these students are literally just off the farm. They have come on dirt paths to blinking neon and western style department stores. They have lots of adjustments to make beyond academic ones. As noted above, they feel incredibly indebted to parents and family, who are putting all their hopes on them, and some of them are indebted to banks as well. To make matters worse, most of them were overprotected as younger children so the adjustment is all the more challenging. I heard of a fairly recent incident in which some young student of rural origin on a large urban campus in another province hammered a couple fellow students to death because he felt he was being ridiculed as a bumpkin who didn't know how to dance or dress or talk like the city folk. Supposedly he was found not to be criminally insane or pathologically anti-social—just full of hatred for the city people, who he felt had wronged him. (The common word for bumpkin is 土包子, tubaozi, which means something like 'wrapped in mud' or 'mud ball,' very descriptive but not very nice.)
Much more remains to be said about "higher" education here in China and certainly in the US. No one can teach anything well to 400 students, let alone writing and logical thinking with a touch of creative expression in a second language to boot. What the hell am I doing here anyway?
For the first writing assignments, I had students write a journal and then an essay on the topic “A Theme in My Life.” Without much luck I first had a discussion on Erich Fromm's idea of being and having to get them away from seeing their lives just in terms of a job. It was a failure. Without a single exception all 360 of them produced “journals” that were in fact canned essays on the jobs they wanted. A number noted that they had never been asked to think about their lives in this way, so maybe that was part of the problem, but mostly it was just the default mode kicking in. When it was time to turn the journals into essays, I remained very insistent that they go beyond the idea of describing a job to a reflection on what meaning or significance they hoped to give to their lives. They were free to bring in the jobs they hoped to get, but the jobs had to be a part of a larger theme.
I had some mild success. There were a number of common themes, which said some things about life in contemporary China for these students. First, it must be recalled that this is a provincial teachers college of 20,000 students, who are overwhelmingly first generation college. Maybe half are from small rural villages around the province; many others are the children of factory workers in some medium size cities with a minority being the children of K-12 teachers following in their parents' footsteps. What they had to say strongly reflects these conditions.
One theme, frequent but not the most common, was to get rich. Make lots of money by setting up your own export company or whatever, and then buy lots of nice stuff—cars, villas, clothes, travel, etc. Then the background kicks in. After you've made lots of money, indulge your parents, who maybe now go to work in the city after the planting or harvest to keep you in school. Buy them a nice villa too and take them around in your car and overseas with you on your trips. The next use for the money was to do something for the village—build a school, a road or a factory to give people good jobs. I was sometimes indelicate enough to write responses on journals wondering how the CEOs they want to emulate got so rich themselves. Was it not in fact by starting up factories employing rural school drop outs and paying them very little? I never got any answers. Maybe they took my questions to be rhetorical.
Another very common theme was to be a teacher at some level along the K-12 continuum. Clearly lots of students find the calling to be a teacher a noble one and look forward to being the kind of teacher that many of them were affected by—someone who went the extra mile to encourage them to hang in another year and take the college entrance exams again or whatever. They want to be the students' friends and confidants and advocates. Within this context and even in the one above, spending some years teaching in one the China's poor and remote provinces or in Africa as a volunteer was often mentioned. These aspirations were often part of a larger theme of wanting to become a person who is useful to society. While the way these goals were expressed often struck me as naïve or incredibly idealistic, I cannot say that they did not also remind me of some younger days when I had very similar and equally naïve hopes.
A desire for a simple, peaceful or "ordinary" life was a third rather common theme. Give me any kind of job that puts food on the table—I don't care what—but let me live in a natural remote place or do something that removes me from the competitive grasp of the new society, the corrupt politics, the smiling at people I don't respect and the constant looking over my shoulder. I think this feeling might come from the fact that many of them have already seen too much of what they don't like just from the struggle of getting a seat in college.
Other themes included descriptions of lives that would be interesting, challenging, colorful, varied, independent, happy, full of travel, etc. Using their English to be an interpreter for some jet-setting CEO or high official was often seen as a way of accomplishing these other goals. Some of the more career-minded writers mentioned graduate school, which is apparently all the rage now. "Everyone" wants a graduate degree, and a number of my students voiced interest in that as a way of getting a job teaching in college—good pay, job security and long vacations. Talk about naïvete. Well, maybe not if you can get some fat tenure track cake job.
Family was at the center of virtually all of these themes. Family in terms of parents and care for them was equally important as spousal relationships to these still single (mostly) women. Not a few of them began these conversations with phrases like "Because I'm a girl/daughter..." Many made comments about wanting to find a "lover" (爱人, airen, the term for 'spouse' that has been used in post-1949 China) who need not be handsome or rich but is a kind person, devoted and faithful to them. Children—one or two—were in all the pictures. Not one of the male students made a similar comment about trying to find such a woman.
I've heard people talk about how this generation of students feels terribly pressured and for this reason prone to some instability. I certainly see the pressure, but can't say I've yet seen evidence of any obvious instability. The school here has recently set up a counseling center and the challenge is to get students to use it because there is an assumption that people who get counseling are mentally ill, and there is considerable social stigma in China about mental illness, maybe like the US in the 50s. Another issue is that so many of these students are literally just off the farm. They have come on dirt paths to blinking neon and western style department stores. They have lots of adjustments to make beyond academic ones. As noted above, they feel incredibly indebted to parents and family, who are putting all their hopes on them, and some of them are indebted to banks as well. To make matters worse, most of them were overprotected as younger children so the adjustment is all the more challenging. I heard of a fairly recent incident in which some young student of rural origin on a large urban campus in another province hammered a couple fellow students to death because he felt he was being ridiculed as a bumpkin who didn't know how to dance or dress or talk like the city folk. Supposedly he was found not to be criminally insane or pathologically anti-social—just full of hatred for the city people, who he felt had wronged him. (The common word for bumpkin is 土包子, tubaozi, which means something like 'wrapped in mud' or 'mud ball,' very descriptive but not very nice.)
Much more remains to be said about "higher" education here in China and certainly in the US. No one can teach anything well to 400 students, let alone writing and logical thinking with a touch of creative expression in a second language to boot. What the hell am I doing here anyway?
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Reflections on Some Environmental Issues
Reflections on Some Environmental Issues
All told, Xinxiang, a city of about 600,000, seems to have somewhat cleaner air than when I was first here in 2001 though the bad air then may have been due to the spring burning of the winter wheat stubble. Now there are signs all over the countryside saying that such burning is prohibited and will be fined. I have seen this directive disregarded on a small scale, but the real test will come this spring after the winter wheat harvest when it's traditional to burn the stubble before turning over the soil. I can clearly recall in May of 2001 being able to look directly at the sun in the middle of the day and thinking that this was not a good thing.
The foreign affairs director said last week that the heat in his apartment building has not been turned on because the local government refused to allow the coal burning boiler to be used due to failure to meet pollution standards. In the seven-storey building where most of my classes are, they have yet to turn on the heat, but they are likely just saving money. In another classroom building the heat is on but not in the brand new art building. We have had heat in our apartment since November 15th, but I have heard no rumor that any of this variability has to do with pollution standards.
One sees very few pollution creating vehicles. Some taxis are pretty creaky, but I do not see any of them belching out black exhaust since they would be pretty easy prey to be stopped and fined by the police. (I would say extorted, but this is not Chicago.) There are plenty of public busses and vast majority of vehicles are electric bikes or bicycles rather than cars. Motorcycles are still common enough, but in terms of noise and exhaust pollution they seem well regulated.
However, even given the above, I can almost never see Taihang Mountain (太行山) though it is only about 4 miles from here, an hour or so away on my bike. I know what direction it's in, so if I want to go there I can just head north into the dusty smog and eventually it will appear. Anyway, it's a bit of a mystery where the smog comes from and why it varies so much from day to day. Surely the wind is a factor, but I've yet to see a clear pattern. There are two huge coal burning power plants right near the mountains, and I've bicycled right up to them, one of which looks very new, but I don't see the stacks putting out serious amounts of smoke. Within walking distance of school there are a few small coal yards where they produce these perforated cylinders of pressed coal that go into stoves in individual homes and I have seen them stacked up on the ledges of older flats, so some few people must still have permission to use them. Well, it's probably the usual stuff one would see anywhere. The little fish get caught and the big ones get away. The only thing I really know about these big fish is that they are somewhere upwind.
I can see very little evidence of any organized recycling effort. I do see older folks with 3-wheelers, who collect things like cardboard and plastic bottles, so they must take them somewhere. Also, I've seen some really down and out types going through the trash barrels on the street looking for plastic bottles for the most part. Virtually nothing is canned in aluminum or other metal cans, and just about the only thing that gets put into glass bottles is, thankfully, beer. Everything else is in plastic bottles, which in theory are recyclable.
A huge issue is plastic bags. They are everywhere. When you go to the store they put bags into bags and if you say anything they look at you as if there must be a language issue because you could not possibly be saying that you don't want your things inside of 3 bags. Plastic litter is one of the most noticeable differences from 20 years ago. In the early 90s just outside of Shenyang I once saw a man plowing a small field with a donkey, but there was so many plastic bags littering the soil that it seemed he was either growing or harvesting plastic bags instead of crops. I wish I'd had a camera to record this old to modern transition. Even the woman here who takes care of the compound and does some light cleaning and who once voiced her concern over environmental issues asked me if I wanted her to throw out my accumulated beer bottles. I said that I'd take them out myself for the 一毛钱 refund, a little more than a penny US, but not for the money but just to get them recycled. This seemed both to surprise and impress her.
I've already noted the terrible condition of the river that runs through town and passes near campus. Just walking in the neighborhood I can see drains in any number of places discharging waste water of various shades of tan and sickly green into the river. Some of the drains surely come from the campus. The river typically varies somewhat in color from dark grey to virtually black though on just one single day after a rain it was briefly a somewhat not totally unnatural muddy color. I plan to get some pictures one of these days. Even students have remarked that in their 19 or 20-year lives they can remember swimming and fishing in now lifeless hometown streams.
I've seen farmers in the local truck farm fields outside of town walk the rows of vegetables generously spraying what I take to be insecticides (they weed by hoeing or by hand—their labor being cheaper than the cost of herbicides) without gloves or masks. In reading my 360 students' journals on friendship, there were easily half a dozen who mentioned losing a high school classmate to cancer, often leukemia. A number also reported losing a young father to cancer, a father probably because of a dangerously polluted industrial work site. Of course, such things are plenty common enough in the US, where there was a recent report (in the UK Guardian newspaper) of a cancer cluster near a depleted uranium dumpsite.
Street sweepers are out daily in the morning to get the litter off the streets where people often just drop it because they know somebody will be by in the morning. Nevertheless, people, especially younger ones, do typically take the extra steps to put their trash in receptacles. However, I have also seen the street sweepers conveniently sweep the litter into the run off drains if they happen not to be covered.
I guess there's just not much of the good old 60s what-goes-around-comes-around awareness here yet. One possible reason for this obliviousness to environmental issues is the fact that even 20 years ago most everything was made of natural materials, so it didn't much matter where you dropped it. Furthermore, the previous non-consumerist economy meant that everything had to be used frugally, and you went shopping everyday with your basket as there were no plastic bags given out in stores. Thus, one must ask if the real issue is lack of environmental awareness or lack of foresight—both in China and the West—as to the implications of an immediately and maximally profitable capitalist-consumerist economy. In any case, I have seen some really stunning examples of the failure to deal with these issues here in China.
Once on a ferry from Hong Kong to Canton, I was amazed to see a trash receptacle lined with a plastic bag at the end of every single row of seats and signs about how you should put your trash in the proper place. I was pretty impressed. As we got into the estuary close to Canton, I saw the cleaning guy go dutifully up and down the rows and stuff each of these little plastic bags into two large ones. He then tied them off and proceeded to the fantail of the boat, where he gave them a quick windup whirl and tossed them right into the sea.
On a 3-day ferry trip going down the Yangtze River from Chongqing through the Three Gorges on the way to Wuhan, I saw an even more incredible example of this mindset built into the design of a ship. This 3 or 4-deck ferry had easily a few hundred people on it, and it was one of a constant stream of ferries going up and down the river. We'd pass one every hour or so and on they went day after week after month after year. On the ship you could get packaged eats, but it also stopped from time to time at riverside ports for the purchase of meals in styrofoam containers, which had just become available back then in 1988. Right on the railings up and down both sides on every deck there were numerous handy trash chutes, which seemed to show evidence of forethought. Well, in my wanderings around the ship I happened to go down to the first deck and what did I see but that the chutes were open at the bottom and every bit of trash dropped directly into the river. They might as well have instructed people just to throw their trash directly overboard. Perhaps the chutes could have been fixed with collection receptacles or maybe they were removed to save labor and avoid the cost and trouble of proper disposal. I'd like to think that this issue was taken care of soon after we traveled the river, but the recent official confirmation that the Yangtze River baiji dolphin is extinct leads me to think otherwise.
One last example is something I saw right through my apartment window earlier this semester. There is a copy center in the next building and I happened to see some fellow opening toner cartridges and dumping toner right into a sewer grate 10 feet outside the front door of the copy center. For a moment I felt like running out and hollering at him, but I've been here too long for that.
Life is good. The shelves are full. The neon lights blink and beckon. What you don't see won't hurt you. Welcome to the post-modern-high-tech human condition, most recently arrived in China. Yes, e.e. cummings, pity this busy monster, manunkind,/not. Progress is a comfortable disease. Yes, Alfred E. Neuman, What-me worry? Yes, Kurt Vonnegut, And so it goes…
All told, Xinxiang, a city of about 600,000, seems to have somewhat cleaner air than when I was first here in 2001 though the bad air then may have been due to the spring burning of the winter wheat stubble. Now there are signs all over the countryside saying that such burning is prohibited and will be fined. I have seen this directive disregarded on a small scale, but the real test will come this spring after the winter wheat harvest when it's traditional to burn the stubble before turning over the soil. I can clearly recall in May of 2001 being able to look directly at the sun in the middle of the day and thinking that this was not a good thing.
The foreign affairs director said last week that the heat in his apartment building has not been turned on because the local government refused to allow the coal burning boiler to be used due to failure to meet pollution standards. In the seven-storey building where most of my classes are, they have yet to turn on the heat, but they are likely just saving money. In another classroom building the heat is on but not in the brand new art building. We have had heat in our apartment since November 15th, but I have heard no rumor that any of this variability has to do with pollution standards.
One sees very few pollution creating vehicles. Some taxis are pretty creaky, but I do not see any of them belching out black exhaust since they would be pretty easy prey to be stopped and fined by the police. (I would say extorted, but this is not Chicago.) There are plenty of public busses and vast majority of vehicles are electric bikes or bicycles rather than cars. Motorcycles are still common enough, but in terms of noise and exhaust pollution they seem well regulated.
However, even given the above, I can almost never see Taihang Mountain (太行山) though it is only about 4 miles from here, an hour or so away on my bike. I know what direction it's in, so if I want to go there I can just head north into the dusty smog and eventually it will appear. Anyway, it's a bit of a mystery where the smog comes from and why it varies so much from day to day. Surely the wind is a factor, but I've yet to see a clear pattern. There are two huge coal burning power plants right near the mountains, and I've bicycled right up to them, one of which looks very new, but I don't see the stacks putting out serious amounts of smoke. Within walking distance of school there are a few small coal yards where they produce these perforated cylinders of pressed coal that go into stoves in individual homes and I have seen them stacked up on the ledges of older flats, so some few people must still have permission to use them. Well, it's probably the usual stuff one would see anywhere. The little fish get caught and the big ones get away. The only thing I really know about these big fish is that they are somewhere upwind.
I can see very little evidence of any organized recycling effort. I do see older folks with 3-wheelers, who collect things like cardboard and plastic bottles, so they must take them somewhere. Also, I've seen some really down and out types going through the trash barrels on the street looking for plastic bottles for the most part. Virtually nothing is canned in aluminum or other metal cans, and just about the only thing that gets put into glass bottles is, thankfully, beer. Everything else is in plastic bottles, which in theory are recyclable.
A huge issue is plastic bags. They are everywhere. When you go to the store they put bags into bags and if you say anything they look at you as if there must be a language issue because you could not possibly be saying that you don't want your things inside of 3 bags. Plastic litter is one of the most noticeable differences from 20 years ago. In the early 90s just outside of Shenyang I once saw a man plowing a small field with a donkey, but there was so many plastic bags littering the soil that it seemed he was either growing or harvesting plastic bags instead of crops. I wish I'd had a camera to record this old to modern transition. Even the woman here who takes care of the compound and does some light cleaning and who once voiced her concern over environmental issues asked me if I wanted her to throw out my accumulated beer bottles. I said that I'd take them out myself for the 一毛钱 refund, a little more than a penny US, but not for the money but just to get them recycled. This seemed both to surprise and impress her.
I've already noted the terrible condition of the river that runs through town and passes near campus. Just walking in the neighborhood I can see drains in any number of places discharging waste water of various shades of tan and sickly green into the river. Some of the drains surely come from the campus. The river typically varies somewhat in color from dark grey to virtually black though on just one single day after a rain it was briefly a somewhat not totally unnatural muddy color. I plan to get some pictures one of these days. Even students have remarked that in their 19 or 20-year lives they can remember swimming and fishing in now lifeless hometown streams.
I've seen farmers in the local truck farm fields outside of town walk the rows of vegetables generously spraying what I take to be insecticides (they weed by hoeing or by hand—their labor being cheaper than the cost of herbicides) without gloves or masks. In reading my 360 students' journals on friendship, there were easily half a dozen who mentioned losing a high school classmate to cancer, often leukemia. A number also reported losing a young father to cancer, a father probably because of a dangerously polluted industrial work site. Of course, such things are plenty common enough in the US, where there was a recent report (in the UK Guardian newspaper) of a cancer cluster near a depleted uranium dumpsite.
Street sweepers are out daily in the morning to get the litter off the streets where people often just drop it because they know somebody will be by in the morning. Nevertheless, people, especially younger ones, do typically take the extra steps to put their trash in receptacles. However, I have also seen the street sweepers conveniently sweep the litter into the run off drains if they happen not to be covered.
I guess there's just not much of the good old 60s what-goes-around-comes-around awareness here yet. One possible reason for this obliviousness to environmental issues is the fact that even 20 years ago most everything was made of natural materials, so it didn't much matter where you dropped it. Furthermore, the previous non-consumerist economy meant that everything had to be used frugally, and you went shopping everyday with your basket as there were no plastic bags given out in stores. Thus, one must ask if the real issue is lack of environmental awareness or lack of foresight—both in China and the West—as to the implications of an immediately and maximally profitable capitalist-consumerist economy. In any case, I have seen some really stunning examples of the failure to deal with these issues here in China.
Once on a ferry from Hong Kong to Canton, I was amazed to see a trash receptacle lined with a plastic bag at the end of every single row of seats and signs about how you should put your trash in the proper place. I was pretty impressed. As we got into the estuary close to Canton, I saw the cleaning guy go dutifully up and down the rows and stuff each of these little plastic bags into two large ones. He then tied them off and proceeded to the fantail of the boat, where he gave them a quick windup whirl and tossed them right into the sea.
On a 3-day ferry trip going down the Yangtze River from Chongqing through the Three Gorges on the way to Wuhan, I saw an even more incredible example of this mindset built into the design of a ship. This 3 or 4-deck ferry had easily a few hundred people on it, and it was one of a constant stream of ferries going up and down the river. We'd pass one every hour or so and on they went day after week after month after year. On the ship you could get packaged eats, but it also stopped from time to time at riverside ports for the purchase of meals in styrofoam containers, which had just become available back then in 1988. Right on the railings up and down both sides on every deck there were numerous handy trash chutes, which seemed to show evidence of forethought. Well, in my wanderings around the ship I happened to go down to the first deck and what did I see but that the chutes were open at the bottom and every bit of trash dropped directly into the river. They might as well have instructed people just to throw their trash directly overboard. Perhaps the chutes could have been fixed with collection receptacles or maybe they were removed to save labor and avoid the cost and trouble of proper disposal. I'd like to think that this issue was taken care of soon after we traveled the river, but the recent official confirmation that the Yangtze River baiji dolphin is extinct leads me to think otherwise.
One last example is something I saw right through my apartment window earlier this semester. There is a copy center in the next building and I happened to see some fellow opening toner cartridges and dumping toner right into a sewer grate 10 feet outside the front door of the copy center. For a moment I felt like running out and hollering at him, but I've been here too long for that.
Life is good. The shelves are full. The neon lights blink and beckon. What you don't see won't hurt you. Welcome to the post-modern-high-tech human condition, most recently arrived in China. Yes, e.e. cummings, pity this busy monster, manunkind,/not. Progress is a comfortable disease. Yes, Alfred E. Neuman, What-me worry? Yes, Kurt Vonnegut, And so it goes…
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Back to Hohot, Back to Xinxiang, Back to Reality
Back to Hohot, Back to Xinxiang, Back to Reality
The trip from Datong back to Hohot was uneventful though it was a nice day of clean air once we got out of the city. From that point of view, I should probably not call it uneventful at all. Clean air is indeed an event. Another uneventful—i.e. typical—situation was the traffic snarl we encountered trying to go the last block into the bus terminal. I clocked us at taking 20 minutes to go the last hundred yards and make a left turn across the lane of oncoming traffic. Needless to say there was no traffic light, no one to direct traffic and no one in the oncoming lanes willing to stop a moment to let anyone make a left turn. To quote the Analects of Confucius, “And so it goes...”
At the evening meal across the street from the hotel I was spoken to in English for the only time on this trip. The speakers were two 15 or 16-year old waitresses who were almost surely just junior high school graduates or drop outs who took this job near the hotel for the occasional break from drudgery that I apparently represented to them. They were paying a Chinese person to teach them some English occasionally, but when they found out I was a native speaker and a teacher they immediately asked if I would take them on as students. For a second I was afraid that they were going to get down to do a traditional kowtow and call me master. I hastily explained that I was just passing through and it wasn't possible. They reminded me so much of my early attempts to learn Cantonese on the street in Chinatown in Chicago, a far cry from the privileged in both China and the US who could shell out big cash to send their bright aspiring youth to study abroad. Stubbornness and a willingness to work my way overseas and learn on the street eventually took me a long way, but only in miles, not career. Indeed, it ultimately dead ended me into permanent “comp slave” status on both sides of the Pacific. I wish these two young ladies well, but it's a very safe bet that if I were to live long enough to go back there in 20 years, I'd find them. My young university students are yearning to go to the west of China to give educational opportunities to the poor children in the villages of Xinjiang and Gansu but haven't figured out that they could save a lot of bus fare by just looking under their noses.
While looking for an internet bar afterward we stumbled onto a small old Daoist temple just blocks from the hotel. The priest we talked to said he was one of five who look after the place and interest in Daoism is growing. He told us he was 75, so he was born in 1932 and has seen a lot of history. For example, he recalled that the Japanese military had come to Hohot. I really did not know the Japanese had gone so far into Mongolia until I came across it for the first time reading Haruki Murakami's The Windup Bird Chronicles. The priest also said that he got lots of trouble during the Cultural Revolution and was chased to this place from his original temple, which got shut down. He told me what sect he belonged to and that Daoists still revere Laozi and pay attention to diet and do not eat meat. His parents were Daoists and that was how he got his start. He smiled when I was able to quote a few lines from the Dao De Jing (道德经), and that earned me some "free" books on Daoism though I had to follow with the customary "offering." (Life in the Daoist world is all about balance, don't you know.) We got a complete guided tour of the temple and it was interesting to see a whole separate room for a very large statue of the God of Wealth (财神) complete with smaller statues of Kuanyin and the Buddha thrown in for good measure. As a passerby told me in one of Buddhist temples in Datong regarding the Book of Changes zodiac on the temple floor, well, these traditional philosophies have lots in common. This is certainly true enough, but these believers might just be covering all their bases in a kind of Chinese version of Pascal's wager. This point was reinforced to me later in the evening when we passed a good sized Christian church, and just down the block a bit there was a store with "Soul Bookstore" in English over the door. It sold religious books and crosses, etc., but they were covering their bases too because they also sold drapes and curtains on the side!
Most of the last day in Hohot was spent at the Inner Mongolia Provincial Museum. It is a new huge building with very original architecture. An interesting aside first: We went there by #3 bus, which in fact is run and driven by the military. There was a statement behind the driver's seat that this service was set up to serve some military offices in the area and the public as well. In fact, there were no military personnel on the bus that I could see and I'm thinking it was mostly a public relations thing. The bus driver was a rather austere looking woman in her 20s wearing her army uniform, but she was quite helpful when I asked about where to get off for the museum. I only felt bad that I hurried to the back of the bus so as not to miss the stop and didn't properly thank her.
The museum itself is very impressive—four floors with exhibits on two themes, natural history and Mongolian culture. As for the former, there was an excellent dinosaur and early mammal exhibit with findings from the many rich dinosaur bone fields in the Gobi desert (another parallel with the Dakotas). The exhibits were accompanied by video displays rivaling those of Jurassic Park. The other natural history exhibits were on the geology and geography of Inner Mongolia and how the exploitation of these resources is of great benefit to the nation, etc., etc. I had not been aware of the great diversity of Inner Mongolia's geography including wetlands and forests mostly in the northern and northeastern regions. Much of it looked like northern Minnesota. Everywhere too were statements about the importance of protecting the environment.
Most of the rest of the museum was devoted to the history, culture and society of the Mongol peoples, who are many and varied. The main theme was how these peoples were/are an integral part of the Chinese nation and Chinese history. There was nothing at all that I could see about the country of Mongolia just down the pike to the north. The Wei and Liao dynasties, both of Mongol origin are especially fascinating in that they had a very high level of culture and indeed four or five of the Mongol peoples, including the Manchus, had their own writing system totally distinct from Chinese characters. One small group, the Dauer, number only about 130,000 today and still don't have a written form of their language. Well, as noted in an earlier blog, when your culture turns into a museum exhibit, you'd better be looking over your shoulder because the handwriting is on the wall.
One last exhibit was about Inner Mongolia at the time of the anti-Japanese war. There were many pictures and stories of young “heroes” in their 20s and 30s who were killed by the Japanese for their communist party/nationalist activities. No doubt that their anti-imperialist sacrifices and struggles were inspirational. The exhibits were used, however, to lead into rather typical statements about Chinese Communist Party (CCP) history and how due to that history the CCP is uniquely suited to continue leading China today and into the future.
Before going to sleep I headed across the street for some bottled water. Looking to stretch a bit, I took the stairs instead of the elevator and saw some interesting stuff on employee bulletin boards. All of this stuff probably came out of some undergrad personnel management course in the US. There were pictures and awards for the employees of the month, just like the nonsense I used to see at the University of Wisconsin in Superior (except there the big prize was a special parking place!). There were complimentary messages about particular employees from guests (I presume) to make the workers feel good in lieu of decent pay. Sound familiar, oh ye workers of the world? Workers of course are decent human beings and for the most part are kind to their fellow human being hotel guests just as I have busted my chops to teach decently for little pay, no permanent job status and expensive insurance policies (or none at all). There were even English phrases pasted up on the board like “Corporate Culture” without any Chinese translation. Give me a break. I doubt that even one of these sheet changers and mop pushers ever had a chance to go far enough in school to learn such English vocabulary if any English at all. Another interesting notice had to do with an insurance policy option for drivers. They could choose to buy medical insurance for things that might happen to them on the job—accidents, injury, etc.—for 100 yuan per year, maybe about 10 or 15% of one month’s salary. It was not really much, but I could see people blowing it off. What the hell, pocket the money and take your chances. What are the odds that they would pay up on your whiplash anyway?
The last thing of interest I noted was at the Hohot airport on the way out. Clearly catering to the air traveling Chinese business crowd, there were translations of two of Thomas Friedman's feel good books about the global economy—a great thing for everyone, especially Tom Friedman. It just needs a little tweaking in some places once in a while and then we will all benefit. In Deng Xiaoping's immortal words, some of us (us?) just have to get rich first. (His children happened to be among the very first.) There was also a book by a young Chinese CEO, which contained the following advice on politics. As a business person, you have to stay on top of what's going on in politics, but don't try to influence it. This guy will definitely go far.
Well, I can't say the trip to Inner Mongolia was a waste. I got 80 papers and journals read on the road a whole day before getting back to Xinxiang in time to get a fresh batch. Workers of the world...
The trip from Datong back to Hohot was uneventful though it was a nice day of clean air once we got out of the city. From that point of view, I should probably not call it uneventful at all. Clean air is indeed an event. Another uneventful—i.e. typical—situation was the traffic snarl we encountered trying to go the last block into the bus terminal. I clocked us at taking 20 minutes to go the last hundred yards and make a left turn across the lane of oncoming traffic. Needless to say there was no traffic light, no one to direct traffic and no one in the oncoming lanes willing to stop a moment to let anyone make a left turn. To quote the Analects of Confucius, “And so it goes...”
At the evening meal across the street from the hotel I was spoken to in English for the only time on this trip. The speakers were two 15 or 16-year old waitresses who were almost surely just junior high school graduates or drop outs who took this job near the hotel for the occasional break from drudgery that I apparently represented to them. They were paying a Chinese person to teach them some English occasionally, but when they found out I was a native speaker and a teacher they immediately asked if I would take them on as students. For a second I was afraid that they were going to get down to do a traditional kowtow and call me master. I hastily explained that I was just passing through and it wasn't possible. They reminded me so much of my early attempts to learn Cantonese on the street in Chinatown in Chicago, a far cry from the privileged in both China and the US who could shell out big cash to send their bright aspiring youth to study abroad. Stubbornness and a willingness to work my way overseas and learn on the street eventually took me a long way, but only in miles, not career. Indeed, it ultimately dead ended me into permanent “comp slave” status on both sides of the Pacific. I wish these two young ladies well, but it's a very safe bet that if I were to live long enough to go back there in 20 years, I'd find them. My young university students are yearning to go to the west of China to give educational opportunities to the poor children in the villages of Xinjiang and Gansu but haven't figured out that they could save a lot of bus fare by just looking under their noses.
While looking for an internet bar afterward we stumbled onto a small old Daoist temple just blocks from the hotel. The priest we talked to said he was one of five who look after the place and interest in Daoism is growing. He told us he was 75, so he was born in 1932 and has seen a lot of history. For example, he recalled that the Japanese military had come to Hohot. I really did not know the Japanese had gone so far into Mongolia until I came across it for the first time reading Haruki Murakami's The Windup Bird Chronicles. The priest also said that he got lots of trouble during the Cultural Revolution and was chased to this place from his original temple, which got shut down. He told me what sect he belonged to and that Daoists still revere Laozi and pay attention to diet and do not eat meat. His parents were Daoists and that was how he got his start. He smiled when I was able to quote a few lines from the Dao De Jing (道德经), and that earned me some "free" books on Daoism though I had to follow with the customary "offering." (Life in the Daoist world is all about balance, don't you know.) We got a complete guided tour of the temple and it was interesting to see a whole separate room for a very large statue of the God of Wealth (财神) complete with smaller statues of Kuanyin and the Buddha thrown in for good measure. As a passerby told me in one of Buddhist temples in Datong regarding the Book of Changes zodiac on the temple floor, well, these traditional philosophies have lots in common. This is certainly true enough, but these believers might just be covering all their bases in a kind of Chinese version of Pascal's wager. This point was reinforced to me later in the evening when we passed a good sized Christian church, and just down the block a bit there was a store with "Soul Bookstore" in English over the door. It sold religious books and crosses, etc., but they were covering their bases too because they also sold drapes and curtains on the side!
Most of the last day in Hohot was spent at the Inner Mongolia Provincial Museum. It is a new huge building with very original architecture. An interesting aside first: We went there by #3 bus, which in fact is run and driven by the military. There was a statement behind the driver's seat that this service was set up to serve some military offices in the area and the public as well. In fact, there were no military personnel on the bus that I could see and I'm thinking it was mostly a public relations thing. The bus driver was a rather austere looking woman in her 20s wearing her army uniform, but she was quite helpful when I asked about where to get off for the museum. I only felt bad that I hurried to the back of the bus so as not to miss the stop and didn't properly thank her.
The museum itself is very impressive—four floors with exhibits on two themes, natural history and Mongolian culture. As for the former, there was an excellent dinosaur and early mammal exhibit with findings from the many rich dinosaur bone fields in the Gobi desert (another parallel with the Dakotas). The exhibits were accompanied by video displays rivaling those of Jurassic Park. The other natural history exhibits were on the geology and geography of Inner Mongolia and how the exploitation of these resources is of great benefit to the nation, etc., etc. I had not been aware of the great diversity of Inner Mongolia's geography including wetlands and forests mostly in the northern and northeastern regions. Much of it looked like northern Minnesota. Everywhere too were statements about the importance of protecting the environment.
Most of the rest of the museum was devoted to the history, culture and society of the Mongol peoples, who are many and varied. The main theme was how these peoples were/are an integral part of the Chinese nation and Chinese history. There was nothing at all that I could see about the country of Mongolia just down the pike to the north. The Wei and Liao dynasties, both of Mongol origin are especially fascinating in that they had a very high level of culture and indeed four or five of the Mongol peoples, including the Manchus, had their own writing system totally distinct from Chinese characters. One small group, the Dauer, number only about 130,000 today and still don't have a written form of their language. Well, as noted in an earlier blog, when your culture turns into a museum exhibit, you'd better be looking over your shoulder because the handwriting is on the wall.
One last exhibit was about Inner Mongolia at the time of the anti-Japanese war. There were many pictures and stories of young “heroes” in their 20s and 30s who were killed by the Japanese for their communist party/nationalist activities. No doubt that their anti-imperialist sacrifices and struggles were inspirational. The exhibits were used, however, to lead into rather typical statements about Chinese Communist Party (CCP) history and how due to that history the CCP is uniquely suited to continue leading China today and into the future.
Before going to sleep I headed across the street for some bottled water. Looking to stretch a bit, I took the stairs instead of the elevator and saw some interesting stuff on employee bulletin boards. All of this stuff probably came out of some undergrad personnel management course in the US. There were pictures and awards for the employees of the month, just like the nonsense I used to see at the University of Wisconsin in Superior (except there the big prize was a special parking place!). There were complimentary messages about particular employees from guests (I presume) to make the workers feel good in lieu of decent pay. Sound familiar, oh ye workers of the world? Workers of course are decent human beings and for the most part are kind to their fellow human being hotel guests just as I have busted my chops to teach decently for little pay, no permanent job status and expensive insurance policies (or none at all). There were even English phrases pasted up on the board like “Corporate Culture” without any Chinese translation. Give me a break. I doubt that even one of these sheet changers and mop pushers ever had a chance to go far enough in school to learn such English vocabulary if any English at all. Another interesting notice had to do with an insurance policy option for drivers. They could choose to buy medical insurance for things that might happen to them on the job—accidents, injury, etc.—for 100 yuan per year, maybe about 10 or 15% of one month’s salary. It was not really much, but I could see people blowing it off. What the hell, pocket the money and take your chances. What are the odds that they would pay up on your whiplash anyway?
The last thing of interest I noted was at the Hohot airport on the way out. Clearly catering to the air traveling Chinese business crowd, there were translations of two of Thomas Friedman's feel good books about the global economy—a great thing for everyone, especially Tom Friedman. It just needs a little tweaking in some places once in a while and then we will all benefit. In Deng Xiaoping's immortal words, some of us (us?) just have to get rich first. (His children happened to be among the very first.) There was also a book by a young Chinese CEO, which contained the following advice on politics. As a business person, you have to stay on top of what's going on in politics, but don't try to influence it. This guy will definitely go far.
Well, I can't say the trip to Inner Mongolia was a waste. I got 80 papers and journals read on the road a whole day before getting back to Xinxiang in time to get a fresh batch. Workers of the world...
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Datong--From the Sublime to the Earthy
Datong—From the Sublime to the Earthy
We got a cab first thing the next morning to head out to the Yungang Grottoes (云冈石窟) just outside of town. This is the main attraction of Datong, dating back to the early years of the Northern Wei dynasty in the 5th century A.D. The grottoes are carved into a one-km long sandstone mountain ridge and hold some 50,000 statues of all kinds and sizes from the minute up to the 17-meter high seated Buddha. For those into such things, it's easy to see the strong Indian artistic influence on these carvings reflecting the recent arrival of the Buddhism from India at the time. The cost, energy and craftsmanship required to build such structures at a time when there was little to spare in a subsistence economy never ceases to amaze one.
It was somewhat surprising that there were very few foreign tourists there, though indeed it was past the international tourist season. However, since it was the week of the National Holiday the place was swarming with tourists from all over China. Thus, the austerity of the place was pretty much lost, not only from the crowds but also from the huge coal complex that you knew was just across the valley. By late morning a steady rain was falling and umbrellas suddenly sprang up to 150 yuan from just 15 a few hours earlier. I put a plastic bag on my head and made do. One woman was trying to sell me a picture book of the grottoes for 265 yuan that I had seen on the street for 90 the day before. Indeed, as one so often hears back in the US, things can change fast in China!
On the way out to the grottoes, the cab driver and I were exchanging stories about drunk passengers and other risks and challenges of my former profession. He was also quite interested in US alcoholic beverages and taxes. He seemed pleased that in China when something is listed as 10 yuan, that's what you actually pay. He also said that, unlike the rich in America, the rich in China do indeed pay taxes but nothing in comparison to what they rake in. Then he said what I've heard so often here in the same joking manner—about how the big guys in every country always get the cream and the rest of us have to do real work. Of course, that's true enough but I almost think many average Chinese almost feel good about how they have now joined this “family of nations” and can claim solidarity with the rest of the world. Now that China has fat cats, China has arrived. Another topic was race relations. He seemed very pleased with China's record. One does certainly see many slogans about all people's unity (团起来) as though sloganeering makes it so. Nevertheless, for sure there is more recognition here of the need actively to stress and promote the need for racial harmony, bilingual education, etc. whereas in the US all of this is swept under the rug or papered over on the assumption that all individuals are equal before the law. None of this takes away from the fact that in both countries the real divide is socio-economic class status, the elephant in the room that no one wants to notice.
What's just as impressive as Datong's huge coal complex itself is the many, many blocks of apartments stacked on the low mountain right below the mine entrance to accommodate the workers, certainly many thousands of them. In response to my question, the cab driver said that this particular mine has been safe because it's overseen directly by the state. He said that it's in the small independent mines where the fatalities happen. Even if true, the stats are that about a dozen or so coal miners die in China every day. I've seen several times in international news reports that a new coal burning power facility comes on line in China about once a week. Both the US and China are burning more coal than ever. I just hope that there's no coal under the Yungang grottoes or their fate will certainly be sealed.
Datong is certainly a kind of backward city, not only for its older housing stock but just little things like the fact that the bus station where you buy tickets is in one place and depending on where you are going you might have to trudge for blocks with your luggage to some unmarked parking lot where the bus actually departs from. Unlike in Hohot where a computer spits out your ticket with all the details of cost, seat and departure time, in Datong the handwritten ticket doesn't say anything about which bus you're on, not to mention a seat; it merely confirms your right to fight your way on to one of the busses leaving that day. You also have to pay one yuan for insurance—from Datong to Hohot but not the other way. What do the Datong drivers know that the Hohot drivers don't?
In a bookstore in the highly commercialized temple complex area, we met a young woman who went to a computer school after high school in another city but came back to work in this city and felt positive about recent improvements, modest though they seemed to me. She gave up on computers and got the bookstore job because she loves to read and suggested a couple of popular contemporary novelists. It seems that lots of people I've met are loyal to their home area, even a kind of run down place like Datong. Of course, this is more true of working class people everywhere—place and family are more important than mobility and career—who you are with rather than what you do.
My last experience in Datong was to shed a tear before boarding the bus for the 3 1/2 hour ride back to Hohot. I saw what I took to be a public toilet across the square in a small building run by an old man who sold small snacks and daily use items on the left and oversaw the very odiferous toilets on the right, which more than overwhelmed any pleasant smells that might have been coming from the snacks not 10 feet away. I told him I needed to use the facilities, so he promptly asked me “a shit or a piss? (literally a “big comfort” or a “small comfort,” 大便 or 小便). I wasn't expecting to pay or answer such a question and hesitated for just a moment, so he continued, “Shits are a dollar and pisses 50 cents.” So I said, “A piss” and promptly handed him my coin. “Door number three!” he said, and for just a split second I was reminded of some US quiz show game, but I quickly realized I was in a different realm as I followed my nose down the corridor, held my breath, did what I came for, and headed back to the bus.
I really want to come back to Datong someday. Its combination of ancient cultural treasures and earthiness—China in a nutshell—appeals to me.
We got a cab first thing the next morning to head out to the Yungang Grottoes (云冈石窟) just outside of town. This is the main attraction of Datong, dating back to the early years of the Northern Wei dynasty in the 5th century A.D. The grottoes are carved into a one-km long sandstone mountain ridge and hold some 50,000 statues of all kinds and sizes from the minute up to the 17-meter high seated Buddha. For those into such things, it's easy to see the strong Indian artistic influence on these carvings reflecting the recent arrival of the Buddhism from India at the time. The cost, energy and craftsmanship required to build such structures at a time when there was little to spare in a subsistence economy never ceases to amaze one.
It was somewhat surprising that there were very few foreign tourists there, though indeed it was past the international tourist season. However, since it was the week of the National Holiday the place was swarming with tourists from all over China. Thus, the austerity of the place was pretty much lost, not only from the crowds but also from the huge coal complex that you knew was just across the valley. By late morning a steady rain was falling and umbrellas suddenly sprang up to 150 yuan from just 15 a few hours earlier. I put a plastic bag on my head and made do. One woman was trying to sell me a picture book of the grottoes for 265 yuan that I had seen on the street for 90 the day before. Indeed, as one so often hears back in the US, things can change fast in China!
On the way out to the grottoes, the cab driver and I were exchanging stories about drunk passengers and other risks and challenges of my former profession. He was also quite interested in US alcoholic beverages and taxes. He seemed pleased that in China when something is listed as 10 yuan, that's what you actually pay. He also said that, unlike the rich in America, the rich in China do indeed pay taxes but nothing in comparison to what they rake in. Then he said what I've heard so often here in the same joking manner—about how the big guys in every country always get the cream and the rest of us have to do real work. Of course, that's true enough but I almost think many average Chinese almost feel good about how they have now joined this “family of nations” and can claim solidarity with the rest of the world. Now that China has fat cats, China has arrived. Another topic was race relations. He seemed very pleased with China's record. One does certainly see many slogans about all people's unity (团起来) as though sloganeering makes it so. Nevertheless, for sure there is more recognition here of the need actively to stress and promote the need for racial harmony, bilingual education, etc. whereas in the US all of this is swept under the rug or papered over on the assumption that all individuals are equal before the law. None of this takes away from the fact that in both countries the real divide is socio-economic class status, the elephant in the room that no one wants to notice.
What's just as impressive as Datong's huge coal complex itself is the many, many blocks of apartments stacked on the low mountain right below the mine entrance to accommodate the workers, certainly many thousands of them. In response to my question, the cab driver said that this particular mine has been safe because it's overseen directly by the state. He said that it's in the small independent mines where the fatalities happen. Even if true, the stats are that about a dozen or so coal miners die in China every day. I've seen several times in international news reports that a new coal burning power facility comes on line in China about once a week. Both the US and China are burning more coal than ever. I just hope that there's no coal under the Yungang grottoes or their fate will certainly be sealed.
Datong is certainly a kind of backward city, not only for its older housing stock but just little things like the fact that the bus station where you buy tickets is in one place and depending on where you are going you might have to trudge for blocks with your luggage to some unmarked parking lot where the bus actually departs from. Unlike in Hohot where a computer spits out your ticket with all the details of cost, seat and departure time, in Datong the handwritten ticket doesn't say anything about which bus you're on, not to mention a seat; it merely confirms your right to fight your way on to one of the busses leaving that day. You also have to pay one yuan for insurance—from Datong to Hohot but not the other way. What do the Datong drivers know that the Hohot drivers don't?
In a bookstore in the highly commercialized temple complex area, we met a young woman who went to a computer school after high school in another city but came back to work in this city and felt positive about recent improvements, modest though they seemed to me. She gave up on computers and got the bookstore job because she loves to read and suggested a couple of popular contemporary novelists. It seems that lots of people I've met are loyal to their home area, even a kind of run down place like Datong. Of course, this is more true of working class people everywhere—place and family are more important than mobility and career—who you are with rather than what you do.
My last experience in Datong was to shed a tear before boarding the bus for the 3 1/2 hour ride back to Hohot. I saw what I took to be a public toilet across the square in a small building run by an old man who sold small snacks and daily use items on the left and oversaw the very odiferous toilets on the right, which more than overwhelmed any pleasant smells that might have been coming from the snacks not 10 feet away. I told him I needed to use the facilities, so he promptly asked me “a shit or a piss? (literally a “big comfort” or a “small comfort,” 大便 or 小便). I wasn't expecting to pay or answer such a question and hesitated for just a moment, so he continued, “Shits are a dollar and pisses 50 cents.” So I said, “A piss” and promptly handed him my coin. “Door number three!” he said, and for just a split second I was reminded of some US quiz show game, but I quickly realized I was in a different realm as I followed my nose down the corridor, held my breath, did what I came for, and headed back to the bus.
I really want to come back to Datong someday. Its combination of ancient cultural treasures and earthiness—China in a nutshell—appeals to me.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
Datong--Ancient Dust and Modern Dust
Datong—Ancient Dust and Modern Dust
Datong (大同) is the ancient capital of several dynasties starting in about the 4th century A.D. Thus, there is yellow earth dust going back thousands of years. Most of the dust, however, is of more recent origin, more black than yellow, emanating from the huge coal complex right outside of town. Thus, it is perhaps symbolic of lots of places in China where grimy, oily coal dust covers unbelievable cultural treasures. In Datong you can typically look up directly at the sun in mid-day and it looks like the moon. The first impressions are that it also has less of 2007 China's new construction and better quality housing, but I never saw the whole town. Coal powers China, but for some reason it seems to be doing less for Datong.
We arrived at the hotel in mid-afternoon and the cab driver from the bus station was very anxious to cut a deal with us to drive us all around to see all the sites of the area for a fixed price. He was very confident we could do it all in a day, probably at about 100/km/hr., slowing down a bit for some pictures, of course. He said that Datong and the surrounding counties had 4 million people and that the hotel we were staying at was (淘汰) past its prime or fallen into disrepair. I suppose he just wanted us to experience the very best of Datong, and he did introduce us to a fabulous noodle shop right across the street. In fact, the hotel was a bit run down, but there was plenty of hot water in the shower and it had a fabulous view into people's kitchens in the apartment block 10 yards across the alley through some smoke vents.
Since there was plenty of time in the day yet, we set out to see the two big Kuanyin temples, which were within walking distance. They had very nice accompanying exhibits of artifacts from the Tang, Jin and Liao dynasties. Also, in spite of the soot and noise of the city, they were very peaceful places as well as being active temples.
At the second temple, Po-lin bought a small Kuanyin statue, mostly at the encouragement of a friend in Tianjin, who has now become a very serious devotee of Pure Land Buddhism, which they also had books on. After the purchase, the sales lady, having become a Buddhist since starting to work at the shop, suggested taking it over to be blessed by the monk (for a donation, of course!) and while he was doing that I asked the her about a huge newly built Christian church sticking up not a hundred yards from the temple and whether or not there were a lot of Christian converts. She said quite a few (挺多) and I asked why. She quickly became very solicitous and started talking about how we Chinese have our Buddhism and the Moslems have their god and the Christians have theirs and it's all ok. Perhaps she assumed as a Westerner I was a Christian who needed reassurance about China's being open to Christianity. But I said that was not my concern at all. I was only curious about whether Christians were actively proselytizing (传教) and she said no. Nevertheless, there are lots of Christian converts in China compared to before, and it's a topic for further discussion.
After we got back to the hotel we had a dinner of daoxue noodles (刀削面), literally ‘knife cut noodles,' which is a kind of very fat chewy noodle made by slicing strips off of a big cylinder of heavy steamed bread or whatever about 2 feet long and 5 of 6 inches in diameter. These noodles then get slopped into greasy pork or mutton soup or whatever suits your fancy (even vegetarian—guess which one I didn't have). This is a specialty of the region and the place was crazy crowded. One had to stand with one's tray and wait for a table, but not for long because those slippery noodles greased with pork or mutton fat slide down fast.
This was still early in the week of the National Holiday, so most people were off of work and the night market was swarming partly due to decent weather (coal dust aside). There was every kind of snack and we started off with smelly bean curd (臭豆腐), which really does smell, well, pretty bad. It's first fermented in some way and then deep fried, after which it tastes, well, pretty good. In the south they serve it plain, but in north they like to serve it with sauce, which we really didn't want. Please hold the sauce. Oh, no, you have to try the sauce. It's very good. Well, ok, just put a little on the side. A little! This is typical of street vendors, all over the world probably. You always get more than you want. I want half a catty. Before you can start reaching for your money, here's one catty weighed up and in your hands. Oh, well, I guess so. Sure... Why not... I'll use it eventually.
There were various other kinds of things like fried squid, chestnuts, roasted sweet potatoes, barbecued lamb, all kinds of peanuts, melon seeds in all sizes and colors, cold vegetables, steamed corn on the cob (not sweet), pop corn, and much, much more. While we were buying the smelly bean curd, a middle aged dark skinned country woman in the next stall was trying to interest me in some roasted chestnuts. I put her off, but on the way back while finishing my squid on a stick I bought 5 yuan worth and after the usual stuff about my speaking Chinese she looks over and says, Oh, and you've married a Chinese. She seemed pleasd...maybe because I bought her chestnuts after all. She reminded me of Sandburg's fish monger, terribly happy for there to be fish (or chestnuts) and people to sell them to.
We also happened to walk past the very large Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government office building facing the square, and in celebration of the national holiday, it had huge banners of self-congratulation about CCP leadership and banners for long live Marx, Lenin and Mao, all of whom might be somewhat perplexed about what was going on in the square across the street. But maybe not. Anyway, it was interesting to see Mao so unambiguously praised given that he has been pushed into the background for some time. It seems like some kind of reassessment is going on but it's hard to get just which way the wind is blowing.
The night ended at a 3-storey jade store full of very expensive stuff, where Po-lin wanted to go in and look around. Up on the third floor there were small things going for a couple of grand USD. Preferring to be in a bookstore where prices are more in my range, I paced about silently in the distance because I had no/have no/will never have any interest in buying jade, but then somebody, looking in the foreigner's direction, said oh, too bad he doesn't understand, and I said well it's not that, I'm just not a jade shopper. Oh, he talks, he knows Chinese! Well, then, sit down, and out comes the tea and the cigarettes and more chit-chat and the whole thing took another hour. I still don't know anything about jade except that the China-Burma connection has lots to do with it, and I never expect to buy or own a piece of it in my life.
Datong (大同) is the ancient capital of several dynasties starting in about the 4th century A.D. Thus, there is yellow earth dust going back thousands of years. Most of the dust, however, is of more recent origin, more black than yellow, emanating from the huge coal complex right outside of town. Thus, it is perhaps symbolic of lots of places in China where grimy, oily coal dust covers unbelievable cultural treasures. In Datong you can typically look up directly at the sun in mid-day and it looks like the moon. The first impressions are that it also has less of 2007 China's new construction and better quality housing, but I never saw the whole town. Coal powers China, but for some reason it seems to be doing less for Datong.
We arrived at the hotel in mid-afternoon and the cab driver from the bus station was very anxious to cut a deal with us to drive us all around to see all the sites of the area for a fixed price. He was very confident we could do it all in a day, probably at about 100/km/hr., slowing down a bit for some pictures, of course. He said that Datong and the surrounding counties had 4 million people and that the hotel we were staying at was (淘汰) past its prime or fallen into disrepair. I suppose he just wanted us to experience the very best of Datong, and he did introduce us to a fabulous noodle shop right across the street. In fact, the hotel was a bit run down, but there was plenty of hot water in the shower and it had a fabulous view into people's kitchens in the apartment block 10 yards across the alley through some smoke vents.
Since there was plenty of time in the day yet, we set out to see the two big Kuanyin temples, which were within walking distance. They had very nice accompanying exhibits of artifacts from the Tang, Jin and Liao dynasties. Also, in spite of the soot and noise of the city, they were very peaceful places as well as being active temples.
At the second temple, Po-lin bought a small Kuanyin statue, mostly at the encouragement of a friend in Tianjin, who has now become a very serious devotee of Pure Land Buddhism, which they also had books on. After the purchase, the sales lady, having become a Buddhist since starting to work at the shop, suggested taking it over to be blessed by the monk (for a donation, of course!) and while he was doing that I asked the her about a huge newly built Christian church sticking up not a hundred yards from the temple and whether or not there were a lot of Christian converts. She said quite a few (挺多) and I asked why. She quickly became very solicitous and started talking about how we Chinese have our Buddhism and the Moslems have their god and the Christians have theirs and it's all ok. Perhaps she assumed as a Westerner I was a Christian who needed reassurance about China's being open to Christianity. But I said that was not my concern at all. I was only curious about whether Christians were actively proselytizing (传教) and she said no. Nevertheless, there are lots of Christian converts in China compared to before, and it's a topic for further discussion.
After we got back to the hotel we had a dinner of daoxue noodles (刀削面), literally ‘knife cut noodles,' which is a kind of very fat chewy noodle made by slicing strips off of a big cylinder of heavy steamed bread or whatever about 2 feet long and 5 of 6 inches in diameter. These noodles then get slopped into greasy pork or mutton soup or whatever suits your fancy (even vegetarian—guess which one I didn't have). This is a specialty of the region and the place was crazy crowded. One had to stand with one's tray and wait for a table, but not for long because those slippery noodles greased with pork or mutton fat slide down fast.
This was still early in the week of the National Holiday, so most people were off of work and the night market was swarming partly due to decent weather (coal dust aside). There was every kind of snack and we started off with smelly bean curd (臭豆腐), which really does smell, well, pretty bad. It's first fermented in some way and then deep fried, after which it tastes, well, pretty good. In the south they serve it plain, but in north they like to serve it with sauce, which we really didn't want. Please hold the sauce. Oh, no, you have to try the sauce. It's very good. Well, ok, just put a little on the side. A little! This is typical of street vendors, all over the world probably. You always get more than you want. I want half a catty. Before you can start reaching for your money, here's one catty weighed up and in your hands. Oh, well, I guess so. Sure... Why not... I'll use it eventually.
There were various other kinds of things like fried squid, chestnuts, roasted sweet potatoes, barbecued lamb, all kinds of peanuts, melon seeds in all sizes and colors, cold vegetables, steamed corn on the cob (not sweet), pop corn, and much, much more. While we were buying the smelly bean curd, a middle aged dark skinned country woman in the next stall was trying to interest me in some roasted chestnuts. I put her off, but on the way back while finishing my squid on a stick I bought 5 yuan worth and after the usual stuff about my speaking Chinese she looks over and says, Oh, and you've married a Chinese. She seemed pleasd...maybe because I bought her chestnuts after all. She reminded me of Sandburg's fish monger, terribly happy for there to be fish (or chestnuts) and people to sell them to.
We also happened to walk past the very large Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government office building facing the square, and in celebration of the national holiday, it had huge banners of self-congratulation about CCP leadership and banners for long live Marx, Lenin and Mao, all of whom might be somewhat perplexed about what was going on in the square across the street. But maybe not. Anyway, it was interesting to see Mao so unambiguously praised given that he has been pushed into the background for some time. It seems like some kind of reassessment is going on but it's hard to get just which way the wind is blowing.
The night ended at a 3-storey jade store full of very expensive stuff, where Po-lin wanted to go in and look around. Up on the third floor there were small things going for a couple of grand USD. Preferring to be in a bookstore where prices are more in my range, I paced about silently in the distance because I had no/have no/will never have any interest in buying jade, but then somebody, looking in the foreigner's direction, said oh, too bad he doesn't understand, and I said well it's not that, I'm just not a jade shopper. Oh, he talks, he knows Chinese! Well, then, sit down, and out comes the tea and the cigarettes and more chit-chat and the whole thing took another hour. I still don't know anything about jade except that the China-Burma connection has lots to do with it, and I never expect to buy or own a piece of it in my life.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
No Melon Seed Cracking, No Smoking
No Melon Seed Cracking, No Smoking
These were the first words by way of announcement as we rolled out of Hohot on the way to Datong by bus during the next leg of our Inner Mongolia/Datong trip. ‘Melon seed cracking’ is the literal translation of 嗑瓜子, which refers to the eating of sunflower, pumpkin or other melon seeds after cracking them between the front teeth and skillfully grabbing the little prize with the tongue, something people frequently do while killing time for whatever reason, like a long bus ride. Most often people just spit the seeds out on the ground or wherever they happen to be. However, this was not going to be acceptable on this bus presumably because he who was making the announcement would be he would be cleaning up the piles of seed husks at the end of the trip.
The bus ticket from Hohot to Datong (大同), the home of the Yungang Buddhist grottoes, was 50 yuan or about $7 US for the 3 and a half hour trip. It's just the kind of trip I love—overland through eastern Inner Mongolia and then south into northern Shanxi (山西) province. Shanxi means ‘west of the mountains’ though there is hardly a place in China that is not east, west, north, or south of some mountains or others.
As we headed east—but also on the previous day above Hohot and in Xinxiang as well, I noticed that lots of tree planting has been going on in recent years. Many seem to have been planted just this spring and many othes are clearly only about 5 to 10 years old. Most are along road sides, in the dry gulches, or on the lower slopes of the low mountains we were winding through. Most were making it, but given the drought of the past 3 years some have not. Twenty years ago it seemed that very little tree planting was being done after the demise of communes, after which time everything was to be done only for immediate profit. Though the profit motive is more operative than ever, tree planting has made a come back probably for environmental reasons, and hopefully not too little too late. High on the bare brown mountain sides in a several places there were huge slogans spelled out in white stone, “Re-beautify the mountains and rivers.” Note the appropriate emphasis on Re-. At least a start is being made on doing something about these dry valleys and bare mountains. It's encouraging. I choose to be encouraged.
The 4-lane highway was incredibly crowded with truck traffic and very few private cars. The trucks carried mostly semi-finished goods like pipe, specialty steel products, light machinery, etc. License plates were virtually all local Inner Mongolian plates so there is almost no long distance hauling by truck as in the US. Thus, in spite of the loss of some land, the highways seem to be serving a better more regional purpose than they do in the US. Our driver was exceptionally aggressive. He laid on the loud horn constantly and it always sounded the same but the meaning did in fact vary. Sometimes it meant “Be careful because I'm passing you on the left” while other times it meant “Watch out because I'm passing you on the right shoulder” or perhaps “Here I come squeezing in between at 90 km/hr." or maybe "Get out of my way because I'm passing someone who's in the process of passing someone else.” Variations on a theme, as you can see. The right shoulder is in fact a passing lane or at least is used as such without hesitation. People have no qualms about passing vehicles that are themselves passing vehicles in the face of oncoming traffic. Amazingly it somehow all seems to work because everyone is operating by the same rule and accidents are in fact quite rare. That basic rule of the road is that driving here is an elaborate second-nature game of chicken.
In spite of the rather dry and somewhat bare countryside, the villages we rolled by seemed to be prosperous enough, well kept, and in a generally good state of repair. Fifteen years ago I wandered into rural villages like these in the northeast where homes had only dirt floors, not to say that there couldn't still be some like that here. As is typical, all the homes face southeast with their high back walls to the cold northwest wind and the courtyards and large windows welcoming the warm sun, which here does manage to get through the dust and minimal pollution. Villages varied in size from maybe less than a hundred to three or four hundred, but not so big as one would see in the far south, where more people can live per square mile due to year around agriculture. Some homes still had corn drying on the rooftops and in a few places further north farmers were still digging up potatoes. In this dry area there seemed to be little in the way of a second crop. The poplars in the valleys were getting quite yellow and reminded me a lot of northern Minnesota, but in that their beauty was comparable I wasn't homesick. To my joy and amazement, I even saw a couple of wild geese in flight.
In the fields with some regularity there were traditional mound burial sites, in some places quite elaborate with large round piles of soil and stones and even occasionally low concrete walls rather than the more modest oblong ones with a few flat stones in front. These were once strictly forbidden lest farm land be wasted on the dead, but even 20 years ago they were making a comeback.
In a couple of places I saw a few new Buddhist statues, in particular one maybe 20-meter new concrete lying Buddha with some new temple buildings going up around it. Clearly there has been some renewed interest in Buddhism, but new structures on this scale are still rare.
In this somewhat less developed area, I saw more donkeys than further south but also more milk cows. Maybe it could be said that as donkey labor decreases with mechanization cows are on the increase replacing old animal labor for cereal crops with new animal sources of protein.
Across the valleys parallel to our highway was a train bed with long trains passing every 20 minutes or so all heading west probably out of Shanxi coal country, maybe toward the Batou steel mills in central Inner Mongolia.
Fortunately, we managed to get an hour and a half into the trip before the DVD player came on at the front of the bus with loud syncopated pop song music videos sometimes accompanied by anime characters or else MTV style singers. There was even one disc of Cantonese songs, and all of them had karaoke lyrics at the bottom. Fortunately, no one started singing along.
Outside, in stark contrast to the DVDs, the wild geese and the yellow poplars around the villages made it clear that the quiet beauty and simplicity of the Chinese countryside hasn't been totally lost. Yet, near Datong a ceiling of grey daylight took over and spoke to the precariousness of country life as 5 huge coal-driven turbines and their accompanying stacks came into view, the center of a tangle of power lines heading off frantically in every direction to carry needed power but also noise and neon into every village and valley.
These were the first words by way of announcement as we rolled out of Hohot on the way to Datong by bus during the next leg of our Inner Mongolia/Datong trip. ‘Melon seed cracking’ is the literal translation of 嗑瓜子, which refers to the eating of sunflower, pumpkin or other melon seeds after cracking them between the front teeth and skillfully grabbing the little prize with the tongue, something people frequently do while killing time for whatever reason, like a long bus ride. Most often people just spit the seeds out on the ground or wherever they happen to be. However, this was not going to be acceptable on this bus presumably because he who was making the announcement would be he would be cleaning up the piles of seed husks at the end of the trip.
The bus ticket from Hohot to Datong (大同), the home of the Yungang Buddhist grottoes, was 50 yuan or about $7 US for the 3 and a half hour trip. It's just the kind of trip I love—overland through eastern Inner Mongolia and then south into northern Shanxi (山西) province. Shanxi means ‘west of the mountains’ though there is hardly a place in China that is not east, west, north, or south of some mountains or others.
As we headed east—but also on the previous day above Hohot and in Xinxiang as well, I noticed that lots of tree planting has been going on in recent years. Many seem to have been planted just this spring and many othes are clearly only about 5 to 10 years old. Most are along road sides, in the dry gulches, or on the lower slopes of the low mountains we were winding through. Most were making it, but given the drought of the past 3 years some have not. Twenty years ago it seemed that very little tree planting was being done after the demise of communes, after which time everything was to be done only for immediate profit. Though the profit motive is more operative than ever, tree planting has made a come back probably for environmental reasons, and hopefully not too little too late. High on the bare brown mountain sides in a several places there were huge slogans spelled out in white stone, “Re-beautify the mountains and rivers.” Note the appropriate emphasis on Re-. At least a start is being made on doing something about these dry valleys and bare mountains. It's encouraging. I choose to be encouraged.
The 4-lane highway was incredibly crowded with truck traffic and very few private cars. The trucks carried mostly semi-finished goods like pipe, specialty steel products, light machinery, etc. License plates were virtually all local Inner Mongolian plates so there is almost no long distance hauling by truck as in the US. Thus, in spite of the loss of some land, the highways seem to be serving a better more regional purpose than they do in the US. Our driver was exceptionally aggressive. He laid on the loud horn constantly and it always sounded the same but the meaning did in fact vary. Sometimes it meant “Be careful because I'm passing you on the left” while other times it meant “Watch out because I'm passing you on the right shoulder” or perhaps “Here I come squeezing in between at 90 km/hr." or maybe "Get out of my way because I'm passing someone who's in the process of passing someone else.” Variations on a theme, as you can see. The right shoulder is in fact a passing lane or at least is used as such without hesitation. People have no qualms about passing vehicles that are themselves passing vehicles in the face of oncoming traffic. Amazingly it somehow all seems to work because everyone is operating by the same rule and accidents are in fact quite rare. That basic rule of the road is that driving here is an elaborate second-nature game of chicken.
In spite of the rather dry and somewhat bare countryside, the villages we rolled by seemed to be prosperous enough, well kept, and in a generally good state of repair. Fifteen years ago I wandered into rural villages like these in the northeast where homes had only dirt floors, not to say that there couldn't still be some like that here. As is typical, all the homes face southeast with their high back walls to the cold northwest wind and the courtyards and large windows welcoming the warm sun, which here does manage to get through the dust and minimal pollution. Villages varied in size from maybe less than a hundred to three or four hundred, but not so big as one would see in the far south, where more people can live per square mile due to year around agriculture. Some homes still had corn drying on the rooftops and in a few places further north farmers were still digging up potatoes. In this dry area there seemed to be little in the way of a second crop. The poplars in the valleys were getting quite yellow and reminded me a lot of northern Minnesota, but in that their beauty was comparable I wasn't homesick. To my joy and amazement, I even saw a couple of wild geese in flight.
In the fields with some regularity there were traditional mound burial sites, in some places quite elaborate with large round piles of soil and stones and even occasionally low concrete walls rather than the more modest oblong ones with a few flat stones in front. These were once strictly forbidden lest farm land be wasted on the dead, but even 20 years ago they were making a comeback.
In a couple of places I saw a few new Buddhist statues, in particular one maybe 20-meter new concrete lying Buddha with some new temple buildings going up around it. Clearly there has been some renewed interest in Buddhism, but new structures on this scale are still rare.
In this somewhat less developed area, I saw more donkeys than further south but also more milk cows. Maybe it could be said that as donkey labor decreases with mechanization cows are on the increase replacing old animal labor for cereal crops with new animal sources of protein.
Across the valleys parallel to our highway was a train bed with long trains passing every 20 minutes or so all heading west probably out of Shanxi coal country, maybe toward the Batou steel mills in central Inner Mongolia.
Fortunately, we managed to get an hour and a half into the trip before the DVD player came on at the front of the bus with loud syncopated pop song music videos sometimes accompanied by anime characters or else MTV style singers. There was even one disc of Cantonese songs, and all of them had karaoke lyrics at the bottom. Fortunately, no one started singing along.
Outside, in stark contrast to the DVDs, the wild geese and the yellow poplars around the villages made it clear that the quiet beauty and simplicity of the Chinese countryside hasn't been totally lost. Yet, near Datong a ceiling of grey daylight took over and spoke to the precariousness of country life as 5 huge coal-driven turbines and their accompanying stacks came into view, the center of a tangle of power lines heading off frantically in every direction to carry needed power but also noise and neon into every village and valley.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
The 17th National Communist Party Congress
17th National Party Congress—The State of the Union
On Monday night 10/15 I stayed up and watched a good bit of Hu Jintao's 2-hour plus speech at the opening session of the 17th National Party Congress (NPC). Though I have watched these before, this one more than ever struck me as so similar to presidential State of the Union messages in the US: look authoritative and confident, stay on the scripted message, hit the major themes repeatedly, have good applause lines, and give the pundits something to chew on after the show. It was all there. Only George Bush was missing.
Actually, though evening classes and reading essays leave me little time for TV, I noticed a number of programs in the week prior to the opening of the NPC that were clearly meant to prime the political pump. One chronicled the abolishment some years ago of the hukou (户口) policy, which had tied rural people to the countryside by making it technically illegal for them to move about freely to seek work. In fact, due to the old policy it was easier for employers to exploit rural émigrés who were “secretly” “sneaking” into the city to work in the booming construction field in particular. Now that the policy is gone workers can come freely to the city, though it's an open question as to whether they are less exploited. In any case, the TV program had a clear spin interviewing former rural residents now working in computer fields or showing young women in clean, quiet high-tech production industries. Indeed, the population shift is massive. An article in the local paper just a few days ago reported that in Henan Province alone from now until 2010—three years—two million will move from the countryside to medium and large cities. Though these clean and quiet workplaces may likely be the exception rather than the rule, there is no doubt that the new policy has greatly contributed to China's current economic boom just as the US a century or more ago evolved from a nation of small farmers to one of urban factory workers.
What then were some themes of Hu's speech and what do they tell us? Let me mention a few that struck me as hinting at some underlying tensions that the government is struggling with and that are of major concern across the population. Two related phrases that were repeated by Hu and discussed afterward were “scientific development” (科学发展) and the pursuit of “both good and rapid development” （又好又快的发展）. These, of course, are related to the issue of whether or not the government is going to be able to continue sustained growth without overheating the economy. The follow-up pundits made much of the fact that the word “good” preceded the word “rapid” in the second phrase, suggesting an awareness of the need for careful choices, not just unrestrained and uneven growth. By some accounts the income gap in China has outstripped even that of the United States. The differences in opportunity and quality of life between the city and the countryside are also of serious concern. So the question of who the future growth is going to be good for is on the table more than ever. In this context, Hu's emphasis on “social harmony” (社会和谐) is also telling because it indicates awareness that if the benefits of development are not more equally distributed there will be trouble. While the lid is still pretty much on the kettle, the potential for its flying off is never far removed. This is not a matter of altruism or even justice. The regime's fate depends on it and they know it.
Indeed, Hu frankly stated that the very survival of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) depends on solving the problem of corruption. There has been some very good foreign reporting on issues of corruption, particularly land grabs by local party officials of farm land, which is then sold or leased to “developers” often over the protests of farmers, usually older ones because many younger people would often just as soon throw in the towel and seek their fortunes in the city. Some of the protests have been met with violent suppression while others have been left to simmer. The question is whether there is more to this phenomenon than numerous or even patterned instances of blatant corruption. In my view there is.
In fact, the CCP needs to deal with two non-voting but very influential constituencies as it tries to “modernize” and “develop” China (= industrialize production and turn the population into consumers). The first is the ever more powerful urban business class, many of whom go through revolving doors with party members and their families. Like their American counterparts, they never seem to have quite enough, and they are always ready to tell others how good their acquisitive behavior is for everyone else. The second is the majority of the population, which is either still on the land or working in factories or the growing service sector, many of them mom and pop small enterprises. Lots of these folks are struggling with marginal salaries and worries about health care, but are also as hopeful as they are wary and suspicious. On the surface, the party's strategy seems pretty straightforward—alternatively throw bones at one group and then the other to keep the lid on the kettle and stay in power. It's kind of like the Wall Street crowd switching its contributions from Republicans to Democrats in the current election cycle.
However, the picture I see in China is in fact a good deal more complex than that. Besides just staying in power, or indeed for the sake of doing so, the CCP has to make China into a modern world economy capable of competing with the established industrialized economies like the US and Japan as well as local rival rising star India. In order to do that, the thinking goes, farmers have to be gotten off the land and into urban production facilities. This is what the Meiji autocrats accomplished in late 19th century Japan and what the combination of poor European immigrant workers and robber baron capital did in the US. Now it's China's turn—the same top down exploitative process—but about 100 years or so later, a mere blink of the eye when it comes to Chinese time.
Making this transition with both of the above constituencies hot on their heels in the context of a very volatile world economy is no mean task. Even Bill and Hilary would be challenged. Given a recent history of high-handedness, corruption, and the legacy of Tiananmen, one might wonder how they have survived even this long. There is an answer, but it goes beyond the superficial and self-serving conventional western press explanations of Stalinist repression, lack of human rights, not enough churches, or whatever.
During the week of the NPC, evening television programs of nationalistic song, dance and pageantry were everywhere. I even saw an old Korean War propaganda film rerun as well as a current TV drama about the WW2 Chinese resistance against Japan. Of course, these broadcasts did not just happen by accident during NPC week. They were meant to recall the Chinese Communist Party's finest hours. Certainly not everyone is enthusiastic about the regime, and almost across the board people are concerned about rising income gaps, rural health insurance, unemployment and inflation, but the celebrations about the success of the Chinese economy and the Chinese nation are far less about the CCP government polity than they are about the Chinese people's feeling of having finally arrived after more than a century and a half—yes, a short time by Chinese historical standards but excruciating nonetheless—of weakness, imperialism, and national humiliation. It is hard to tell government statement chickens from public opinion eggs when one reads official editorials about the right of all Chinese people to have a comfortable life (小康) as their Western and Japanese counterparts do and not just be free from hunger and cold (温饱) because this is indeed a matter of national consensus. Equally it is a matter of human rights and justice in the mind's eye of the majority of Chinese, and at this time in their history it is of the highest priority.
On Monday night 10/15 I stayed up and watched a good bit of Hu Jintao's 2-hour plus speech at the opening session of the 17th National Party Congress (NPC). Though I have watched these before, this one more than ever struck me as so similar to presidential State of the Union messages in the US: look authoritative and confident, stay on the scripted message, hit the major themes repeatedly, have good applause lines, and give the pundits something to chew on after the show. It was all there. Only George Bush was missing.
Actually, though evening classes and reading essays leave me little time for TV, I noticed a number of programs in the week prior to the opening of the NPC that were clearly meant to prime the political pump. One chronicled the abolishment some years ago of the hukou (户口) policy, which had tied rural people to the countryside by making it technically illegal for them to move about freely to seek work. In fact, due to the old policy it was easier for employers to exploit rural émigrés who were “secretly” “sneaking” into the city to work in the booming construction field in particular. Now that the policy is gone workers can come freely to the city, though it's an open question as to whether they are less exploited. In any case, the TV program had a clear spin interviewing former rural residents now working in computer fields or showing young women in clean, quiet high-tech production industries. Indeed, the population shift is massive. An article in the local paper just a few days ago reported that in Henan Province alone from now until 2010—three years—two million will move from the countryside to medium and large cities. Though these clean and quiet workplaces may likely be the exception rather than the rule, there is no doubt that the new policy has greatly contributed to China's current economic boom just as the US a century or more ago evolved from a nation of small farmers to one of urban factory workers.
What then were some themes of Hu's speech and what do they tell us? Let me mention a few that struck me as hinting at some underlying tensions that the government is struggling with and that are of major concern across the population. Two related phrases that were repeated by Hu and discussed afterward were “scientific development” (科学发展) and the pursuit of “both good and rapid development” （又好又快的发展）. These, of course, are related to the issue of whether or not the government is going to be able to continue sustained growth without overheating the economy. The follow-up pundits made much of the fact that the word “good” preceded the word “rapid” in the second phrase, suggesting an awareness of the need for careful choices, not just unrestrained and uneven growth. By some accounts the income gap in China has outstripped even that of the United States. The differences in opportunity and quality of life between the city and the countryside are also of serious concern. So the question of who the future growth is going to be good for is on the table more than ever. In this context, Hu's emphasis on “social harmony” (社会和谐) is also telling because it indicates awareness that if the benefits of development are not more equally distributed there will be trouble. While the lid is still pretty much on the kettle, the potential for its flying off is never far removed. This is not a matter of altruism or even justice. The regime's fate depends on it and they know it.
Indeed, Hu frankly stated that the very survival of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) depends on solving the problem of corruption. There has been some very good foreign reporting on issues of corruption, particularly land grabs by local party officials of farm land, which is then sold or leased to “developers” often over the protests of farmers, usually older ones because many younger people would often just as soon throw in the towel and seek their fortunes in the city. Some of the protests have been met with violent suppression while others have been left to simmer. The question is whether there is more to this phenomenon than numerous or even patterned instances of blatant corruption. In my view there is.
In fact, the CCP needs to deal with two non-voting but very influential constituencies as it tries to “modernize” and “develop” China (= industrialize production and turn the population into consumers). The first is the ever more powerful urban business class, many of whom go through revolving doors with party members and their families. Like their American counterparts, they never seem to have quite enough, and they are always ready to tell others how good their acquisitive behavior is for everyone else. The second is the majority of the population, which is either still on the land or working in factories or the growing service sector, many of them mom and pop small enterprises. Lots of these folks are struggling with marginal salaries and worries about health care, but are also as hopeful as they are wary and suspicious. On the surface, the party's strategy seems pretty straightforward—alternatively throw bones at one group and then the other to keep the lid on the kettle and stay in power. It's kind of like the Wall Street crowd switching its contributions from Republicans to Democrats in the current election cycle.
However, the picture I see in China is in fact a good deal more complex than that. Besides just staying in power, or indeed for the sake of doing so, the CCP has to make China into a modern world economy capable of competing with the established industrialized economies like the US and Japan as well as local rival rising star India. In order to do that, the thinking goes, farmers have to be gotten off the land and into urban production facilities. This is what the Meiji autocrats accomplished in late 19th century Japan and what the combination of poor European immigrant workers and robber baron capital did in the US. Now it's China's turn—the same top down exploitative process—but about 100 years or so later, a mere blink of the eye when it comes to Chinese time.
Making this transition with both of the above constituencies hot on their heels in the context of a very volatile world economy is no mean task. Even Bill and Hilary would be challenged. Given a recent history of high-handedness, corruption, and the legacy of Tiananmen, one might wonder how they have survived even this long. There is an answer, but it goes beyond the superficial and self-serving conventional western press explanations of Stalinist repression, lack of human rights, not enough churches, or whatever.
During the week of the NPC, evening television programs of nationalistic song, dance and pageantry were everywhere. I even saw an old Korean War propaganda film rerun as well as a current TV drama about the WW2 Chinese resistance against Japan. Of course, these broadcasts did not just happen by accident during NPC week. They were meant to recall the Chinese Communist Party's finest hours. Certainly not everyone is enthusiastic about the regime, and almost across the board people are concerned about rising income gaps, rural health insurance, unemployment and inflation, but the celebrations about the success of the Chinese economy and the Chinese nation are far less about the CCP government polity than they are about the Chinese people's feeling of having finally arrived after more than a century and a half—yes, a short time by Chinese historical standards but excruciating nonetheless—of weakness, imperialism, and national humiliation. It is hard to tell government statement chickens from public opinion eggs when one reads official editorials about the right of all Chinese people to have a comfortable life (小康) as their Western and Japanese counterparts do and not just be free from hunger and cold (温饱) because this is indeed a matter of national consensus. Equally it is a matter of human rights and justice in the mind's eye of the majority of Chinese, and at this time in their history it is of the highest priority.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Can't Make It To Inner Mongolia? Try the Western Dakotas.
Can't Make It To Inner Mongolia? Try the Western Dakotas. 10/14/07
On the second day of our time in Inner Mongolia we took a day long tour to part of the grasslands above the city of Hohot （呼和浩特）. It was good to get out of the city and up into the mountains, but in fact once you get up in elevation to the grasslands you see that they look virtually identical to the high plains of the western Dakotas. The area has been badly short of rain for the past three years so the grass is in rather poor condition. Our tour guide for the day was a very energetic and interesting young woman of Mongolian ancestry who had lots of stories about history and customs of the local area. Like our cab driver from the previous day, she knew some Mongolian but didn't speak it fluently. We shared the van with 4 other folks from the northeast of China who were also there on vacation. The lunch we had was far more than the six of us could possibly eat and included two different kinds of mutton, both of which were very delicious.
The big thing on the grasslands that the tourists go up there for is horse back riding and it's a regular dude ranch atmosphere and that's where the locals make their money. Well, whatever. We coughed up a little more cash and went horseback riding. You had to pay for a guide too even though you could hardly get lost given that you could see so far and the horses sure as hell knew where to go back to get fed. Stupid me assumed that at least the guide would be a local Mongolian whom I could pump for some comments on the state of Mongolian culture in Han-dominated Inner Mongolia, but in fact he turned out to be a Han Chinese ex-farmer from the area of Taiyuan (太原) in central Shanxi (山西), about 8 hours southeast by bus. The conversation turned out to be interesting anyway. This fellow like so many others was dying to escape the drudgery of low income farming and was lucky to have someone introduce him to this better paying less strenuous job. Typical of rural folks, he was a man of very few words. We talked of farming in his native area and he confirmed that it's a “yellow earth” (黄土地) area, the fertile but dry soil that covers much of northern China. Thus, farming relies extensively on pumping ground water for irrigation and he acknowledged the need to go deeper for the water every year. He also confirmed what I had read in the local paper that the first phase of a huge south to north irrigation project was already beyong the experimental stage. (This is a project even bigger than the schemes we have heard discussed in the Duluth area about diverting Lake Superior water to southern states.) We talked of coal mining, which is big in his native area. He said the pay is good so many people go into it, but it's dangerous because "something's always exploding.” He said that he felt that indeed lots more people in China were “warm and full” (温饱) than before, but that it does not include all. He kept talking about the US as a “developed” country unlike China in almost fatalistic way. He was riding behind me most of the time so I didn't really get a good look at him until later and then saw that we was probably about 50 with the leathery face of someone who'd worked hard outside all his life. Now his whole immediate family lives up on the high plain and his two sons have even gotten into college though he was quick to add that the tuition was a big burden for a horse riding guide, on top of what he'd already paid to get then through junior and senior high school. (No free tuition anymore at those levels either.) But he agreed that this was an investment and he can probably expect that these sons will support him in his old age. I wondered what he might get of the 50 yuan/hr that we paid for the guiding; probably only a fairly small portion washes back to him. Anyway it is surely better than farming. He rarely goes back to his old home around Taiyuan these days.
After we got back from the horseback riding there was an exhibition of Mongolian wresting, but most if not all of the participants were Han Chinese including our former riding guide. Actually, it was rather interesting. Contestants wear a kind of loose leather vest and grab each other on the vest at the shoulders and try to take each other down by tripping and pulling down the opponent at the same time. Winners kept pairing off until only two were left. The champion was one pretty short fellow, who then took on any willing tourists including a few pretty tall Westerners and some husky Koreans, but he beat all of them even though some were easily 1/3 taller.
The whole experience invites comparisons to going to a Hawaiian luau in spite of the fact that bilingual education and the existence of an "autonomous region" should make the area of Inner Mongolia at least potentially more viable than US Indian Reservations in pre-casino days. However, the issue is overwhelmingly one of economics, not bilingual education, as explained in Vanishing Voices (Oxford University, 2000), one of several recent works on the ever quickening disappearance of the world's lesser spoken languages. Sticking with one's native language (even as a bilingual) makes little sense since it's either a waste of time or becomes an impediment to economic survival. It makes a lot more economic sense to speak the language of those with the jobs and/or commodify one's culture and package it for majority culture tourists. Minority culture becomes handicrafts, horse rides, or eco-tourism, all for sale. The North American illustrations of the process—back to the Dakotas—are perhaps the best, or at least most familiar. Indigenous cultures are first overwhelmed (if not outright attacked), then isolated into tiny islands, and finally given the option of total assimilation/annihilation or commodification. Well, perhaps the absolute final stage is having one's culture become a museum exhibit, be it in Hohot or part of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. But from beginning to end the operative factor is economics. In North America, Native Americans hunter-gatherer land was taken by small scale European farmers, who were themselves later replaced by huge scale agribusiness and then perhaps by suburbs. The supreme arbitrator at every turn is profit, rewarded most generously to those who are best at turning land into bank accounts.
Driving from the low plains around Hohot up to the high plains, one can see why over the past few thousand years the Han Chinese and Mongols have fought over the low plains, which could be used equally well for pasture land or farming. It is at the northern edge of the yellow earth belt, and the Han there today grow corn in the lower areas or potatoes in the higher areas till the elevation rises and the yellow earth gives way to thin soils that can only support rough grasses. Thus, this area became the northern outpost of the Han sedentary agriculture-based civilization. This land could function just as well as low pasture for grazing animals at certain times of the year and quite attractive to a nomadic culture like the Mongols. In short, this little corner of the earth illustrates perfectly the Owen Lattimore thesis that the very productive and efficient Chinese agriculture-based civilization extended itself as far as it could from its original center to the northeast, the north, the northwest and west, its political and cultural boundaries becoming equivalent to the geographical boundaries to Chinese style farming.
On the way to the Hohot bus station the next morning to head out for Datong, I listened to the young male cab driver's rather interesting radio station. It was part of a syndicated chain of stations that broadcast simultaneously in about half a dozen major Chinese cities including Hong Kong. The music was very contemporary with some English words like “music radio” splashed in here and there for effect. It was definitely youth-oriented with phrases like 我要我自己的音, ‘I want my own voice.' The best example was a syncopated version of the old classic love song 忘不了‘I can't forget’ with a few phrases of breathy English right at the end. The golden hoards Genghis Khan meet the gold diggers of simulcast radio. And so it goes.
On the second day of our time in Inner Mongolia we took a day long tour to part of the grasslands above the city of Hohot （呼和浩特）. It was good to get out of the city and up into the mountains, but in fact once you get up in elevation to the grasslands you see that they look virtually identical to the high plains of the western Dakotas. The area has been badly short of rain for the past three years so the grass is in rather poor condition. Our tour guide for the day was a very energetic and interesting young woman of Mongolian ancestry who had lots of stories about history and customs of the local area. Like our cab driver from the previous day, she knew some Mongolian but didn't speak it fluently. We shared the van with 4 other folks from the northeast of China who were also there on vacation. The lunch we had was far more than the six of us could possibly eat and included two different kinds of mutton, both of which were very delicious.
The big thing on the grasslands that the tourists go up there for is horse back riding and it's a regular dude ranch atmosphere and that's where the locals make their money. Well, whatever. We coughed up a little more cash and went horseback riding. You had to pay for a guide too even though you could hardly get lost given that you could see so far and the horses sure as hell knew where to go back to get fed. Stupid me assumed that at least the guide would be a local Mongolian whom I could pump for some comments on the state of Mongolian culture in Han-dominated Inner Mongolia, but in fact he turned out to be a Han Chinese ex-farmer from the area of Taiyuan (太原) in central Shanxi (山西), about 8 hours southeast by bus. The conversation turned out to be interesting anyway. This fellow like so many others was dying to escape the drudgery of low income farming and was lucky to have someone introduce him to this better paying less strenuous job. Typical of rural folks, he was a man of very few words. We talked of farming in his native area and he confirmed that it's a “yellow earth” (黄土地) area, the fertile but dry soil that covers much of northern China. Thus, farming relies extensively on pumping ground water for irrigation and he acknowledged the need to go deeper for the water every year. He also confirmed what I had read in the local paper that the first phase of a huge south to north irrigation project was already beyong the experimental stage. (This is a project even bigger than the schemes we have heard discussed in the Duluth area about diverting Lake Superior water to southern states.) We talked of coal mining, which is big in his native area. He said the pay is good so many people go into it, but it's dangerous because "something's always exploding.” He said that he felt that indeed lots more people in China were “warm and full” (温饱) than before, but that it does not include all. He kept talking about the US as a “developed” country unlike China in almost fatalistic way. He was riding behind me most of the time so I didn't really get a good look at him until later and then saw that we was probably about 50 with the leathery face of someone who'd worked hard outside all his life. Now his whole immediate family lives up on the high plain and his two sons have even gotten into college though he was quick to add that the tuition was a big burden for a horse riding guide, on top of what he'd already paid to get then through junior and senior high school. (No free tuition anymore at those levels either.) But he agreed that this was an investment and he can probably expect that these sons will support him in his old age. I wondered what he might get of the 50 yuan/hr that we paid for the guiding; probably only a fairly small portion washes back to him. Anyway it is surely better than farming. He rarely goes back to his old home around Taiyuan these days.
After we got back from the horseback riding there was an exhibition of Mongolian wresting, but most if not all of the participants were Han Chinese including our former riding guide. Actually, it was rather interesting. Contestants wear a kind of loose leather vest and grab each other on the vest at the shoulders and try to take each other down by tripping and pulling down the opponent at the same time. Winners kept pairing off until only two were left. The champion was one pretty short fellow, who then took on any willing tourists including a few pretty tall Westerners and some husky Koreans, but he beat all of them even though some were easily 1/3 taller.
The whole experience invites comparisons to going to a Hawaiian luau in spite of the fact that bilingual education and the existence of an "autonomous region" should make the area of Inner Mongolia at least potentially more viable than US Indian Reservations in pre-casino days. However, the issue is overwhelmingly one of economics, not bilingual education, as explained in Vanishing Voices (Oxford University, 2000), one of several recent works on the ever quickening disappearance of the world's lesser spoken languages. Sticking with one's native language (even as a bilingual) makes little sense since it's either a waste of time or becomes an impediment to economic survival. It makes a lot more economic sense to speak the language of those with the jobs and/or commodify one's culture and package it for majority culture tourists. Minority culture becomes handicrafts, horse rides, or eco-tourism, all for sale. The North American illustrations of the process—back to the Dakotas—are perhaps the best, or at least most familiar. Indigenous cultures are first overwhelmed (if not outright attacked), then isolated into tiny islands, and finally given the option of total assimilation/annihilation or commodification. Well, perhaps the absolute final stage is having one's culture become a museum exhibit, be it in Hohot or part of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. But from beginning to end the operative factor is economics. In North America, Native Americans hunter-gatherer land was taken by small scale European farmers, who were themselves later replaced by huge scale agribusiness and then perhaps by suburbs. The supreme arbitrator at every turn is profit, rewarded most generously to those who are best at turning land into bank accounts.
Driving from the low plains around Hohot up to the high plains, one can see why over the past few thousand years the Han Chinese and Mongols have fought over the low plains, which could be used equally well for pasture land or farming. It is at the northern edge of the yellow earth belt, and the Han there today grow corn in the lower areas or potatoes in the higher areas till the elevation rises and the yellow earth gives way to thin soils that can only support rough grasses. Thus, this area became the northern outpost of the Han sedentary agriculture-based civilization. This land could function just as well as low pasture for grazing animals at certain times of the year and quite attractive to a nomadic culture like the Mongols. In short, this little corner of the earth illustrates perfectly the Owen Lattimore thesis that the very productive and efficient Chinese agriculture-based civilization extended itself as far as it could from its original center to the northeast, the north, the northwest and west, its political and cultural boundaries becoming equivalent to the geographical boundaries to Chinese style farming.
On the way to the Hohot bus station the next morning to head out for Datong, I listened to the young male cab driver's rather interesting radio station. It was part of a syndicated chain of stations that broadcast simultaneously in about half a dozen major Chinese cities including Hong Kong. The music was very contemporary with some English words like “music radio” splashed in here and there for effect. It was definitely youth-oriented with phrases like 我要我自己的音, ‘I want my own voice.' The best example was a syncopated version of the old classic love song 忘不了‘I can't forget’ with a few phrases of breathy English right at the end. The golden hoards Genghis Khan meet the gold diggers of simulcast radio. And so it goes.
Monday, October 8, 2007
First Days in Hohot, Inner Mongolia
First days in Hohot, Inner Mongolia
As I knew before we got there, few Mongols live in Inner Mongolia anymore. It's about 85% Han Chinese nowadays, but in fact the Han Chinese have been engaged in a tug of war for an upper hand in Inner Mongolia for a couple of thousand years. After being there for a while one can see why.
As luck would have it, during our first days in town we stayed in a hotel that is just on the border of the Moslem and Mongolian districts of Hohot. I had no idea that there was such a huge Moslem presence in Hohot. Due to the fact that the economy is taking off, lots of Han Moslems, ethnic Uyghur Moslems and non-Moslem Han Chinese have come to Hohot from far west provinces like Gansu and Xinjiang. Wandering the back alleys in the Moslem district around 9 p.m., we tasted some snacks like hot roasted chestnuts, fried beef dumplings, wind dried beef, and, best of all, delicious greasy mutton roasted on a stick over hot coals with local spices that I could not identify but probably containing cumin. The kids selling it were working for a middle aged Xinjiang Uyghur fellow, but they were Han Chinese from the countryside of Gansu, the province next door, one of the poorest in China. The older one was maybe in his upper teens, but the younger kid looked barely fifteen. They said repeatedly that the place they come from is “very poor” and they looked the part with their quiet manner, dark rough faces and hands, worn down fingernails and brown teeth, all dead giveaways. “Very poor” in this area can mean things like minimal health care, marginal protein intake, limited education and maybe dirt floor houses—things that would make one want to take a chance on moving on and doing just about anything else. I kidded with their boss about how many thousand yuan (rmb) he was paying them per month. He answered with a loud laugh that they were getting a few hundred per month—less than $100 US—plus room and board. But they looked pretty well-fed and I suspect that was their primary motivation for being there.
Just after dark the worshippers in a local mosque were just finishing prayers; most of the people leaving the place on their bicycles were older though there were some younger ones too. All the women had their heads covered but not their faces. Nearby there was also a very large Moslem high school, and restaurants serving religiously appropriate menus were everywhere to be found in the district.
Hohot, a city of 1.4 million, is booming. Baotou, an hour and a half to the west, is the industrial center in Inner Mongolia with its mines and steel mills, but a good bit of the money from resource exploitation in Inner Mongolia seems to be finding its way into Hohot, the provincial capital. New construction and business hotels are everywhere. Tourism is the other big industry. Someone with a strong public relations/advertising background is doing lots of aggressive city planning in Hohot. In the Moslem district all the buildings on the main drag are done in a Mid-East décor of domes and minarets outlined in neon (which happily got turned off around 11 p.m.). Monday was the first day of National Day, celebrating the founding of the PRC and a 3-day national holiday for all workers. However, it was more like a huge city-wide Fourth of July sale at Walmart and a K Mart blue light special rolled into one because nearly every business was open, many of them having nothing to do with direct consumer sales to the throngs of people wandering the streets to shop and sample the street food. Given that there's so much money to be made everyday of the year, why would any fool want to take a day off?
A cab driver we hired to take us to one of the bigger historical sites a bit outside the city turned out to be an ethnic Mongol, but he and his parents were all born in the city in Hohot. I asked him about Mongol-Han relations and he said that they were good. He took a little light razzing in the army (he volunteered for 3 years) about being a mutton eater, but said he never had any problems at all. He recounted his experience in a bilingual Mongolian-Chinese program in high school that he was put into due to his ethnic heritage, but he often skipped the Mongolian language classes because knowing Mongolian wasn't going to do him any good in the future. He didn't grow up speaking the Mongolian at home either. Virtually all shop titles in Hohot are in Mongolian script as well as Chinese characters, but this fellow said that the quality of the Mongolian translations was terrible, probably as bad, he guessed, as the English one sees on signs and T-shirts. He mentioned almost in passing that he has a brother who's studying for a Ph.D. in Japan. This could be testimony of equality of opportunity or just as likely that the family is investing in this brother as the one most likely to succeed.
The place he took us was the tomb of Wang Shaojun（王绍君）, a beautiful Chinese woman who was a commoner but agreed to marry the Mongol chief during the Han dynasty (about 2,000 years ago) to promote peaceful relations between the two peoples and end many years of bloodshed. Due to the success of her mission she was given a lavish burial by the Han dynasty government after her death. On the grounds of the tomb there was also a free live performance of Han era music that was both interesting and enjoyable. Later we visited a district with some Buddhist temples and all around them was a huge area of new construction in traditional architecture—maybe 3 or 4 bocks long and about 2 blocks wide—for shops to make cash off tourists. They were just finishing construction, so there were “for rent” signs for potential shop keepers, but the signs said you could only open a shop if it was for selling cultural kitsch along the themes of the neighborhood or food, of course. One of the temple complexes to the Bodhisattva Kuanyin was being completely rebuilt from the ground up by a company from Hangzhou (way on the other side of China) that specializes in such projects. However, the huge new main temple was being built in concrete, an incredible departure from any other temple restoration project I'd ever seen before anywhere, which is typically done piecemeal maximizing use of original materials by or under the supervision of local monks. I don't think there is going to be as much as a scrap of original material in any of the new structures. I'd love to know who was putting up the cash for this project. This is clearly an economic venture that has nothing to do with Buddhism.
Of the other two temples, one was in fact a rather peaceful place with its original structures intact. It has an inscription from Kangxi, the first Qing emperor, written around 1700 in Chinese, Manchu, Tibetan and Mongol script. It was interesting to see the scripts side by side. In front of one of the statues of Buddha I observed a woman in her 30s giggling slightly and doing a quick embarrassed kowtow (with her family standing sheepishly around) and then drop a 100 yuan note--the only one--into the offerings basket. That could be about10% of an average worker's monthly salary, so maybe it would be no laughing matter for some, though she was pretty well dressed, so the 100 yuan might not be more than she'd spend for a new skirt. She might just as well have been thanking the Buddha for her good fortune as asking for a favor. One might as well cover all one's bases—Pascal’s wager in modern China.
Since October 1st was the actual national day, the day of the proclamation of the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the evening TV was full of appropriate programming—patriotic songs and sketches, etc. Two things of note were that a number of song-sketches gave average people high visibility, one in particular to the hard hat workers doing all the new high rise construction projects going up everywhere around the country. The other thing was the prominent role of the military, both in the performances and in the audience, which was panned frequently by the cameras. Various prizes were given out for artistic and cultural achievements and many of the recipients were in the military. Their acceptance speeches were impassioned declarations of their loyalty to the nation and willingness to sacrifice on its behalf.
As I knew before we got there, few Mongols live in Inner Mongolia anymore. It's about 85% Han Chinese nowadays, but in fact the Han Chinese have been engaged in a tug of war for an upper hand in Inner Mongolia for a couple of thousand years. After being there for a while one can see why.
As luck would have it, during our first days in town we stayed in a hotel that is just on the border of the Moslem and Mongolian districts of Hohot. I had no idea that there was such a huge Moslem presence in Hohot. Due to the fact that the economy is taking off, lots of Han Moslems, ethnic Uyghur Moslems and non-Moslem Han Chinese have come to Hohot from far west provinces like Gansu and Xinjiang. Wandering the back alleys in the Moslem district around 9 p.m., we tasted some snacks like hot roasted chestnuts, fried beef dumplings, wind dried beef, and, best of all, delicious greasy mutton roasted on a stick over hot coals with local spices that I could not identify but probably containing cumin. The kids selling it were working for a middle aged Xinjiang Uyghur fellow, but they were Han Chinese from the countryside of Gansu, the province next door, one of the poorest in China. The older one was maybe in his upper teens, but the younger kid looked barely fifteen. They said repeatedly that the place they come from is “very poor” and they looked the part with their quiet manner, dark rough faces and hands, worn down fingernails and brown teeth, all dead giveaways. “Very poor” in this area can mean things like minimal health care, marginal protein intake, limited education and maybe dirt floor houses—things that would make one want to take a chance on moving on and doing just about anything else. I kidded with their boss about how many thousand yuan (rmb) he was paying them per month. He answered with a loud laugh that they were getting a few hundred per month—less than $100 US—plus room and board. But they looked pretty well-fed and I suspect that was their primary motivation for being there.
Just after dark the worshippers in a local mosque were just finishing prayers; most of the people leaving the place on their bicycles were older though there were some younger ones too. All the women had their heads covered but not their faces. Nearby there was also a very large Moslem high school, and restaurants serving religiously appropriate menus were everywhere to be found in the district.
Hohot, a city of 1.4 million, is booming. Baotou, an hour and a half to the west, is the industrial center in Inner Mongolia with its mines and steel mills, but a good bit of the money from resource exploitation in Inner Mongolia seems to be finding its way into Hohot, the provincial capital. New construction and business hotels are everywhere. Tourism is the other big industry. Someone with a strong public relations/advertising background is doing lots of aggressive city planning in Hohot. In the Moslem district all the buildings on the main drag are done in a Mid-East décor of domes and minarets outlined in neon (which happily got turned off around 11 p.m.). Monday was the first day of National Day, celebrating the founding of the PRC and a 3-day national holiday for all workers. However, it was more like a huge city-wide Fourth of July sale at Walmart and a K Mart blue light special rolled into one because nearly every business was open, many of them having nothing to do with direct consumer sales to the throngs of people wandering the streets to shop and sample the street food. Given that there's so much money to be made everyday of the year, why would any fool want to take a day off?
A cab driver we hired to take us to one of the bigger historical sites a bit outside the city turned out to be an ethnic Mongol, but he and his parents were all born in the city in Hohot. I asked him about Mongol-Han relations and he said that they were good. He took a little light razzing in the army (he volunteered for 3 years) about being a mutton eater, but said he never had any problems at all. He recounted his experience in a bilingual Mongolian-Chinese program in high school that he was put into due to his ethnic heritage, but he often skipped the Mongolian language classes because knowing Mongolian wasn't going to do him any good in the future. He didn't grow up speaking the Mongolian at home either. Virtually all shop titles in Hohot are in Mongolian script as well as Chinese characters, but this fellow said that the quality of the Mongolian translations was terrible, probably as bad, he guessed, as the English one sees on signs and T-shirts. He mentioned almost in passing that he has a brother who's studying for a Ph.D. in Japan. This could be testimony of equality of opportunity or just as likely that the family is investing in this brother as the one most likely to succeed.
The place he took us was the tomb of Wang Shaojun（王绍君）, a beautiful Chinese woman who was a commoner but agreed to marry the Mongol chief during the Han dynasty (about 2,000 years ago) to promote peaceful relations between the two peoples and end many years of bloodshed. Due to the success of her mission she was given a lavish burial by the Han dynasty government after her death. On the grounds of the tomb there was also a free live performance of Han era music that was both interesting and enjoyable. Later we visited a district with some Buddhist temples and all around them was a huge area of new construction in traditional architecture—maybe 3 or 4 bocks long and about 2 blocks wide—for shops to make cash off tourists. They were just finishing construction, so there were “for rent” signs for potential shop keepers, but the signs said you could only open a shop if it was for selling cultural kitsch along the themes of the neighborhood or food, of course. One of the temple complexes to the Bodhisattva Kuanyin was being completely rebuilt from the ground up by a company from Hangzhou (way on the other side of China) that specializes in such projects. However, the huge new main temple was being built in concrete, an incredible departure from any other temple restoration project I'd ever seen before anywhere, which is typically done piecemeal maximizing use of original materials by or under the supervision of local monks. I don't think there is going to be as much as a scrap of original material in any of the new structures. I'd love to know who was putting up the cash for this project. This is clearly an economic venture that has nothing to do with Buddhism.
Of the other two temples, one was in fact a rather peaceful place with its original structures intact. It has an inscription from Kangxi, the first Qing emperor, written around 1700 in Chinese, Manchu, Tibetan and Mongol script. It was interesting to see the scripts side by side. In front of one of the statues of Buddha I observed a woman in her 30s giggling slightly and doing a quick embarrassed kowtow (with her family standing sheepishly around) and then drop a 100 yuan note--the only one--into the offerings basket. That could be about10% of an average worker's monthly salary, so maybe it would be no laughing matter for some, though she was pretty well dressed, so the 100 yuan might not be more than she'd spend for a new skirt. She might just as well have been thanking the Buddha for her good fortune as asking for a favor. One might as well cover all one's bases—Pascal’s wager in modern China.
Since October 1st was the actual national day, the day of the proclamation of the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the evening TV was full of appropriate programming—patriotic songs and sketches, etc. Two things of note were that a number of song-sketches gave average people high visibility, one in particular to the hard hat workers doing all the new high rise construction projects going up everywhere around the country. The other thing was the prominent role of the military, both in the performances and in the audience, which was panned frequently by the cameras. Various prizes were given out for artistic and cultural achievements and many of the recipients were in the military. Their acceptance speeches were impassioned declarations of their loyalty to the nation and willingness to sacrifice on its behalf.
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