I have just finished rereading Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes and ‘Tis, which I last read in early teenage years. I see now how then I could not begin to appreciate what is so astounding about this series — that is, everything. It is hilarious and tragic and I laughed and cried the whole way through, when I wasn’t busy guffawing at the incredible voice distinct only as McCourt’s. In short, I recommend this series a hundred times over to everyone in the world. There you have it.

The reason I write about it on my China blog is to point out the striking similarities between McCourt’s Ireland and 20th century China. As the reader, I could glean enough thought out of the story itself to make the connection, but not a very deep one. It was this interview with McCourt that had me clapping my hand on my forehead (starting at 4:00-5:40):

The public lavatories constitute McCourt’s “juicy slum”, and I am reminded of Baochao Hutong in Beijing, what I consider to be the heart of Beijing, at the center of which is a public lavatory. Meanwhile, next to the hutong is the gradiose military building; not dissimilar to the ornate, gold-lief church of McCourt’s neighborhood. For as McCourt points out, his Ireland was permeated with an atmosphere of bewilderment, not in small part because of the forces of the Church. How could the Church ask for money from poverty-stricken families when its own eaves were laden with gold? Chinese netizens pose a similar question when weibo-ing pictures of their local governments’ hulking offices. Bewilderment to the point that, as McCourt says, one knows not whether to laugh or cry. 哭笑不得，神马都是浮云。

McCourt also talks about reserved displays of emotion being part of the “Irish character,” that is, refusal to show too much warmth to a family member. Teasing is a “family activity,” and you learn quickly to hide any signs of weakness. He had to restrain himself as a teacher in America, at which point highlighting another’s weakness was second nature. Here, I’m reminded of my many Chinese teachers with whom I had to learn patience. Irish teachers (as McCourt points out in another interview) take it personally if a student does not know the answer to a question; having had about 40 different Chinese teachers in the past six years, I can say that, as far as teaching methods go, the sentiment and style is just about the same.

Most interesting of all is the inferiority complex that has birthed great works of literature and art in both countries. McCourt asks, ”What would the Irish be if the English had never invaded?” In his early school years, the lessons of England’s ruthlessness were practically beaten into them; it was not until seventh grade that a teacher mentioned any battle in which both sides suffered (and not just the Irish). And yet from this long-standing suffering came many great poems and ballads, Yeats included. As a China scholar I cannot help but think of how Chinese history is taught, what with the bullying Western forces and of course ruthless, cruel Japan. 

And finally, the organization. McCourt says that when the Irish came to America, they were told to “organize, organize, organize” and organize they did, with great political results. But why could they never do that back in England? The Church. They were being pulled apart by the forces of the church and politics, and here I cannot help but think of the Party. The Party that casts a wary eye on organizations of any kind, the Party that calls labor strikes “disruptions of a harmonious society” and locks them away, the Party that created the atmosphere which has made it impossible to have a “club” at my school (a grad school in China), but rather the nebulously labelled “interest groups.”

The comparison of course can only go so far. When making any grand comparison such as this, it is easy to cherry-pick. What I hope to suggest with these thoughts is that things considered characteristically Irish or Chinese [or whatever] may be less of an independent case than said nationalities would want you to believe. So what constitutes identity? I am not interested in addressing this question here, but hope that above thoughts suggest a more nuanced construction of nationality than what is easy to accept.

How does a foreign city-dweller in China go about camping? It is prudent of me to point out to audiences unfamiliar with China that it is not as simple as matter as finding a campsite and pitching a tent (or perhaps it is, as long as you are flexible about the definition of “campsite”). If one were to follow the rules, one must first find a designated campsite. What does this look like? Take a look:

I came across this v. cool campsite when I was biking on the Yangtze River island. It is a tight spot with rows of fire pits and benches lined up next to each other, a small space for a tent beside each and no back yard — dare I say, a little socialist in feel? The entrance to the clubhouse had a drawbridge, as did the obstacle course next to it. And believe me, this obstacle course is not for the faint of heart:

After asking around a bit, I found out that one had to register at one of these clubhouses to use their campsite. Fair enough. But not foreigners? Only Chinese? Hm. Will have to look into this one. Maybe at an official campsite like Purple Mountain they will be stricter to the rules, but on an island in the middle of the Yangtze which has housed fishers and farmers for thousands of years and probably could not care about some silly camping registration rule, I’m willing to bet that Mr. Ding (the name on the sign) will cut me some slack. Will report back later.

In the meantime, something to chew on: my American classmate spent 6 months travel-camping around China’s northeast. He did not register for a campsite once. He camped on ancient city walls, in alleys, wherever. Once when camping outside an apartment complex, an old man came out and said, “You slept in the alley? You should have let me know, I would have let you sleep in my shed!” Screw the rules.

One could carry these conditions over to the market and legal system and make some fair comparisons; a balance of following rules and being entrepreneurial,  of being “civil” versus being part of the “Wild West.” The state of camping in China seems to run along these same lines: follow the rules and you may or may not get results. Take a risk, pitch a tent, and you may more likely get exactly what you want.

More later when I do some camping myself!

Trying to put aside knee-jerk reactions to simply the word Jihad, what does China look like through this lens? On one level, it is extremely corporate and increasingly globalized. Local brands mimic global brands. Fashion and taste look Westward rather than inward. The beautiful 1920′s qipao dress makes occasional appearances, but nothing like the little black dress. The political processes are largely governed by money and self-interest (if you consider that local officials will sell the village’s land to whichever corporation offers the most), but things get a little hazy near the top.

At the same time, nationalism saturates the education system as well as the media. It is perhaps the strongest unifying belief that mainland Chinese people share — that they are China, and China is good. The central state requires that be the status quo. As far as unifying beliefs and spirituality go, there’s not much more beyond that, at least for now. There is local variation, but the PLA has a pretty strong hold on any physical uprising.

So China’s more of piece with McWorld, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. And not just domestically, either; it is adding to the global media contra-flow by setting up CCTV outlets outside of mainland — even in Time’s Square (CCTV being the party’s television). In a sense, this contributes to a diversified world media, one not just ruled by the Big Six (Viacom, Bertlesmann, NewsCorp, Time-Warner, Vivendi, and Disney), even if it is the mouthpiece of a corrupt authoritarian government. While China is staunch as a nation-state in the traditional sense, it simultaneously indulges glocalization of international brands while also trying to brand itself.

So maybe China’s not exactly part of the McWorld as we see it: its belief in itself as its own brand suggests something closer to Jihad, or — astoundingly — a new McWorld. Maybe what China wants more than anything is for McWorld to look like McWang. Same beast, different language. Let’s just wait and see how their burgers taste.

After a trip to Fujian province with a group of Chinese friends, I’ve changed my stance a bit. Fujian prides itself on seafood. America also has seafood, and in New England, where I grew up, there is no shortage. And yet Chinese vs. American seafood is perhaps the most different of parallel cuisines. I grew up on clam chowder and fish and chips. In Fujian, we were slurping slimy bits right off the seashells. I realized that as much as I tried to learn the difference between the Chinese words for clam, oyster, and mussel, that I never would because I don’t know the difference really in English.

I admit, I finished a lot of meals unsatisfied. I tried everything, and enjoyed most of it. But I was in no way satiated enough by Fujian seafood to feel like I had a meal. Of course my friends wanted it everyday, given that it was the local cuisine. I had to order a lot of noodles and come to terms with the fact that, indeed, I was not “used to” all parts of Chinese cuisine.

Which is actually just fine. I take no issue with my good Chinese friends joking about my American taste. However, when a waitress comes up to my table and says, “You all like this, order this” (“you all” referring to all white people, or, as she sees it, all Westerners), this is a different matter. Whether or not I do like Kung Pao Chicken （宫保鸡丁）is besides the point. If you are American or otherwise come from an ethnically diverse society, then I need not preach to the choir.

I’ve asked the waitresses a few times why they assume I’ll like whatever-food, but for the most part I let it slide. One time a waitress saw me at the counter, ready to order, and very amiably suggested that I go down a few stalls to the hamburger joint. She was not being rude or curt; she actually thought she was being helpful. So I humored her and asked why she did not think I could eat at her restaurant. “It’s just that most foreigners come here looking for that restaurant, so I wanted to help you.” No harm meant. Still, I pointed out that since I speak Chinese (which she knew already before suggesting I leave) that didn’t it seem like I could also eat Chinese food? She laughed and shrugged.

When I get as used to Chinese seafood as I am with Tex-Mex, if that ever happens, then I’ll have some real ammo for my battle on profiling white people in China. In the meantime, best to keep it simple and use discretion.

Someone once told me that there were 20,000 people specifically monitoring internet activity for the Chinese government (ergo, 5 毛 x 20,000  must be < tax payers’ dollars). When I heard this, I remembered standing on the footpath that bridges the two sides of the 6-lane street I lived on when I was in Beijing. From that perch, I can see the road disappearing into the haze on either end. I can see the buildings disappearing into a forest of more buildings, all concrete and white, stretching as far as one can see in the haze.

Twenty thousand? That must be at least three-hundred buildings. I start to count the buildings in view from the footpath, but memory clouds my math. I guess it is probably a few blocks’ worth of office space.

When some family friends visited me in Beijing that summer, I took them to the Forbidden City. Entrance actually was forbidden after five o’clock, so we wound through the outer layers of the palace, where tourists were much more scarce. A bride was having her picture taken against the ancient red wall, the setting sun dousing her in glow. We snaked through the courtyards until we were inside a building. There was a large glass window to an inner room, where about fifty people sat hunched over computers. Within a minute, a woman appeared and asked us to leave — not rudely, more just a matter-of-fact.

 We joked that that was China’s censorship headquarters.

When the internet connection gets lost and I’m signed out of my VPN, I feel suddenly exposed. I imagine there is a person in Beijing sitting behind a computer screen who thinks he’s hit the jackpot because he suddenly has a full view of Lil’ Wayne’s ‘Lollipop’ video. Within a few minutes my entire computer will be non-functioning. I figure either way I have limited time, and I start Lollipop from the beginning.

Caught boy on his phone! Hope his boss doesn’t find out…

The shoes get heated up so that they can be molded to foot-shape

The shoes being molded

A girl sizes up the shoes to make sure they are correctly paired

Hannah Lincoln, February 2012.

I took this picture from the inside of a tour bus on Zhong Shan Lu (中山路) in Quanzhou (泉州）on February 8, 2012. It was rush hour in downtown, and  I suddenly heard a collective gasp from the other side of the bus. I’ve rarely heard an entire group of people in China collectively make pitying noises (nothing in particular meant by that), so I jumped up to see what they were looking at. The younger man is standing over an old man, who he hit with his car (parked on the right, outside the frame, blocking traffic). The old man tried to get up twice, but the driver seemed to tell him to stay down. He then starts to do something on his phone as the old man still reaches out for help.

Incidents such as this one attract special attention in China ever since the Peng Yu case of 2006, in which a Nanjing judge ruled that the man who helped an old lady stand up off the curbside had in fact knocked her down. Although there was no evidence for this, the judge issued the statement that “any ordinary person would not help someone unless they themselves had knocked that person down.” He was then required to pay for her medical  expenses.

Last fall (2011), two-year-old Yue Yue made international headlines after being hit by a van twice. Eighteen people walked past her without doing anything, afraid of the consequences. See earlier post.

Where many people would look at the scene depicted above and first ask “is he alright?”, in China there is a whole other inferred dimension. It seems that indeed the man in the picture is trying to help the old man, and that this will not turn out to be another Yue Yue tragedy. Let’s hope that it also does not turn into the circus that the Peng Yu case continues to be.

I’ve been all over China. I’ve seen the modern cave dwellings in Shanxi and the peacock-capped houses in Xishuangbanna. I’ve drank with the underground folk musicians in Beijing’s hutongs  and debated political theory with Nanjing University’s best professors. I’ve been devoured by the crowds in Mong Kok and blessed by the crisp air of Tiger Leaping Gorge.

Every issue I read or hear about in China almost always stems from a lack of a stable and enforced constitutional legal system. This is the ugly result of many factors which I will not get into here, but suffice it to say many government officials do not have traffic safety or gutter oil at the tops of their priority lists.  The longer I’ve been in China, the more skeptical I have become that China’s democratization is the inevitable eventual step in the rise of this nation.

In Guangzhou now, I have encountered several wonderful bits of information that give me hope.

1. Seatbelts. The taxis’ recordings exhort the front passenger to buckle up. It’s required! Not here will you have a taxi driver who waves a hand at you when you try to fasten your seat belt, saying “You don’t need that.”

2. No Smoking in Restaurants. I know this one has plenty of exceptions, but the dim sum restaurant I went to the other day was the first restaurant in China I’ve ever been in where they enforce this rule (as of May 1, 2011, smoking is “banned” in all public areas in China). Nice to see.

3. Local democracies? I am in no position to confirm this, but one Chinese friend in Guangzhou had just come back from spending the New Year in her home town of Pingyao, Shanxi. She said that the county was gearing up for its first democratic election — as were the majority of local governments across the country. Another friend said that he say campaign posters in his apartment.  Local elections have been set up in thousands of counties since the 80s, but to varying degrees of non-corruption. My Pingyao friend’s excitement about her own local election was palpable — a refreshing change from the usual disinterest or disbelief in the efficacy of local democracy.

4. Treat people the same. I know this definitely has exceptions, but again, this is a rarely-encountered anecdote. An old man came into the dumpling restaurant, bee-lined for my table, and rattled his pan at me. I looked over at the boss, who then got into an argument with him about harassing foreigners. “They’re Westerners!” he cackled, “They have money! What’s the problem?” — “Because you aren’t harassing any of the Chinese customers. People are all the same. If you’re going to be treating foreigners like that, you can go somewhere else.” I’ve never been defended for being a foreigner before — especially not in public and in this manner. Granted, she knew I spoke Chinese and may have been putting on a bit of a show. She also had no interest in appealing to this man, who was just a local beggar. Nonetheless, she said it so that everyone in the restaurant could hear, and I was grateful for not being “foreignized.”

In my short time in Guangzhou, I have enjoyed many pleasant encounters, and these few have left an impression on me. Yes, Guangdong is the richest province. Yes, it has long been influenced by international cultures. It is not like the other provinces in many ways. Either way, it has been a pleasure, and I hope that other cities follow in the footsteps of enforcing basic health and safety laws, to start.

It started with a subway brawl in Hong Kong. Despite signs and announcements prohibiting the consumption of food on the subway, a Chinese mainlander was enjoying a bowl of instant noodles in a subway car. One Hong Kong resident lost his temper, announcing that mainlanders have no respect for Hong Kong rules or way of life. See the video here and read details at the Shanghaiist (try not to be put off by the title “Bitchfight;” it’s got all the right links).

In response, Beijing professor Kong Qingdong lambasted the Hong Kong people on television, saying that they lacked morals and were no better than dogs — imperialist Britain’s dogs, nonetheless. When the video clip went up on Youtube two nights ago (which is not blocked in Hong Kong), I watched as the comments poured down the screen, every few seconds an offended watcher decrying Kong Qingdong’s lack of tact.

One wonders how much it was a simple matter of tact. It was first and foremost hate speech, and that is allegedly why it was removed from Youtube. But “hate speech” is not a phrase you hear in mainland China; “unusual”/”exceptional” are phrases more commonly used to excuse someone’s extreme opinion, if not couched in nationalist rhetoric (where “cultural difference” and “misunderstanding” are more often the words of choice). Indeed, hate speech is too often defensible in mainland if it is in response to insulting mainland culture as such (I am careful not to say “Chinese” culture here). For this reason, such rhetoric appearing on television, egregious as it may be, should not come as a surprise to China-watchers.

In a report by Hong Kong’s Apple Daily 《苹果日报》 this past Sunday, Kong Qingdong denied having said any of it:

English (first three rows):

Yesterday’s Interview                                  vs.                                   On Air (Jan 19, 2012)

That Kong Qingdong is famous for being the 73rd-generation descendant of Confucius (and therefore guaranteed the burden of representing “traditional China” + media spotlight) is not even his most interesting aspect. He also walked side-by-side with Tiananmen Demonstration leader Wang Dan during the events in 1989:

The extent of his involvement in Tiananmen organization is not known, but clearly it was not enough to have him exiled. Nonetheless it sheds a supremely interesting light on who he is and what he’s getting at. I sense a disillusioned, opportunistic post-Mao generation’er who has swallowed the poison of Beijing rhetoric in order to keep his own boat afloat. As it were, he probably is receiving some sort of under-handed kudos for having “defended” the Chinese people. To say he is receiving bad press in Hong Kong is a royal understatement. Unfortunately, it is not likely to make any waves beyond Hong Kong island, what with censored media and 63 years of Maoist discourse dissolving such discussion at the border.