Sign of the Times

December 2010

 

Traveling in foreign countries can sometimes be trying.  Especially when there’s little English spoken, or written.  It’s hard to get answers to questions like ‘How do I get to Dali?”  or  “Where’s the bus station?”  or  “When does the train leave?”  

 

Fortunately, there is often considerable comic relief in the English that is written – on signs and t-shirts and menus. 

 

In China, Li Jiang and Shangri La topped the list for hilarious signs.  

 

In Li Jiang the beautifully carved wooden signs with green or yellow lettering exhorted tourists and travelers alike to act in a ‘civilized’ manner: 

 

To be a Civilized Tourist Please Keep the Place Clean

To be a Civilized Citizen Littering prohibited!

To be a Civilized Citizen Please walk bicycles and motorcycles

Do not make noise in the civilized ancient town

It is everybody’s duty to take the ancient town fire prevention

Beware of slip

Or how about this one, not far from our

lodgings in Li Jiang....

Sexy Tractor: Your Living room in Lijiang

Wine and dine happily and healthily – Do not waste food!

Don’t fouch me, or I will feel a shamed

Less footprints, more aroma

Mountains and rivers will be your friends and you will be with good reputation as a civilized tourist

Cherish the environment please, or beauty will lose 

Green mountain is good to your health and the clear water makes you pleasant

Beautify our lives, purify our minds

You cherish my life, I repay your meadow

Grass-selling Square

Adore the green, embrace the life

Enjoy the cool under tree, beantify the homeland on us

Keep away from the green grass

Waste papers you pick, deep affections you send

…and our favourite… 

Twenty-five Wonderful Things about China

June 9, 2009

1. Stately tree-lined country roads and urban streets. Especially the big old trees, green and graceful, offering shade and shelter, and reminders of the abiding beauty of the natural environment.
2. Tile roofs with upturned corners. So lyrical and light.
3. Free exercise equipment in many parks and playgournds. Sturdy, colourful machines for exercising legs, arms, torso and heart. Well-used, especially in the evenings, when many Chinese come out for their daily exercise.
4. Temples. Everywhere.
5. Women who still dress up in style and can go anywhere in high heels – down uneven cobblestone streets, through muddy paths and across narrow, broken wood-slat bridges.
6. People with lots of time to play mah jong, cards, Chinese checkers, and go, or just sit or stand around drinking tea and watching others play.
7. All things old and ancient.
8. Colourful, friendly minority ethnic groups, especially in Yunnan, where their numbers are plentiful. Especially the ones who still dress in traditional garb, not just for tourists, but for themselves. Who keep their culture alive despite pervasive attempts to Disneyfy.
9. Kites. Wonderful, complicated, colourful, fun and free.
10. Solar water heaters on almost every roof. Subsidized by the Chinese government. And they work like a hot ....!
11. Beautiful night lights. Flood-lit buildings, bridges and trees in warm golds and greens. Fancy street lamps in all colours of the rainbow. Huge neon signs with brilliant multi-coloured lights blinking, swirling, waving. Night symphonies of colour and light.
12. Manicured gardens everywhere. Everything in neat rows. No weeds.
13. Cobble-stone and flag-stone streets. 
14. Hair cuts that come with a half-hour massage – head, neck, shoulders, back, arms and hands. Wonderful!
15. Children. Cute, curious and very friendly. “Hello!” “Hello!” As always the best ambassadors.
16. Trains that run absolutely on time. Absolutely. To the minute.
17. Electric motorcycles. So clean and quiet. What a difference from Vietnam!
18. Evening dancing in the park, square or street. In almost every city folks gather at night and dance together. In some places they do traditional dances in a big circle. In others, ballroom dancing. The music is canned, but lively. It's absolutely free, everyone is welcome, and everyone joins in. They have such fun!
19. Incredibly intricate and beautiful wood carvings, everywhere. Temples, houses, hotels, around windows, on doors. Birds, flowers, animals, Chinese symbols. Some painted gay colours, some 'au naturel.' Whichever, always a feast for the eyes.
20. Cheap buses. Just 20 cents will get you where you want to go.
21. Walking streets. Every city has a pedestrian area. No cars. No motorcycles, often not even any bicycles. Street and food vendors set up in them. 
22. Beautiful mosaics created by patch-work rice paddies in the flat valley bottom, or by terraces cascading down the mountainsides. Flooded and shimmering, or glowing green with new growth. Often enhanced by the sight of peasants with hat and hoes and once in a while by water buffalos working the fields.
23. Bonsais and bamboo.
24. Cheap beer. Not too strong, but not too bad – and the price is right!
25. People's Parks in every town and city. All with lovely gardens, big old trees, bamboo stands, flowers and water features like lotus ponds, rivers with carved stone bridges or lakes with boats for rent (pedal, row and electric motor). Tea-houses or pavilions where you can play games – mah jong, cards, checkers – or do tai chi or yoga. And best of all, people playing music and dancing. Solitary musicians practicing their scales by the edge of the pond. Duets and groups plugging in their sound equipment and playing for whoever stops to listen. People clapping, people sing,ing people dancing to the music. And right beside them another group singing and dancing another tune, another drummer. And several dancercize groups where lithe young men and women lead participants in fast-paced but graceful dance-aerobic numbers. For me, the People's Parks, and what goes on within them, may be The Most Wonderful Thing about China.

 

Eastern and Western Attitudes towards 'Moral' Behaviour

June 8, 2009

This morning we met a Japanese man at Mimosa, our favourite cafe in Yangshuo. He was sitting by himself at a table, busily writing something in English, and conferring with the waitress about translation into Chinese. We were having breakfast.

He was a typically neat and trim Japanese fellow, late middle-age, wearing a light blue tailored shirt and dark slacks. He looked like a professor or business man without a suit jacket.

At one point he looked up from his endeavours and said 'hello!' It was clear he wasn't Chinese, but not clear where he was from, so we asked him, and he answered, “Japan, from a city about half-way between Tokyo and the island of Hokkaido.”

In his own words, he's 'half-retired,' and has been coming to Yangshuo for a couple of months every few months to learn Chinese. He intends, once he learns it, to travel more widely in China.

He stood up and approached our table. “My wallet was stolen yesterday,” he said, patting his pants pocket and shaking his head. “So I am writing this message. Can I read it to you?”

Here's what it said:

“Please make China an even more fantastic country. If any of you friends are about to lose their conscience, then please tell them the story below for their own good. To steal something from others means to throw away your conscience which was given to you by your parents who wanted you to be happy. Happiness exists only in a sound mind.”

He wanted to know if the English was correct. Later that day I saw him again. He had a handful of printed papers. He gave me one. The word 'conscience' had been changed to 'morals.' As the saying here goes, 'same same but different.'

What intrigues me is the very different approach taken in the east towards 'bad behaviour.' Appealing to the higher moral being, making reference to parents, and the concept of happiness. Here in the East these things still appear to have some meaning, to exercise some influence on people's behaviour.

I mentioned this to him, and said, laughing, that in the West, our response to a stolen wallet would more likely go something like this: “if you're gonna steal stuff, you're gonna get caught, maybe by the police. And then you're gonna be sorry.” Crime and punishment.

Although I liked his approach I couldn't imagine it having any effect at all in the West, where morals seem to have gone awol, and parents are definitely passe. Where most people wouldn't have any idea what a 'sound mind' was, and would define 'happiness' quite differently.
And I wonder, given the rapid pace of Westernization in China (and other Asian countries), especially among the i-savvy, hip-hopped and hyped-up young, how much longer his approach, as high-minded as it is, will be effective here.... .

The real China – I’m Lovin’ It!

From Xi-Chang to Xi'an, Chengdu, and Kunming by bus and train, May 14-28, 2009

Cigarettes and cell phones, the air thick with smoke and Chin-chat, loud. There is no other volume.  Cities redolent of urine, shit, vomit and garbage. Eau de Chine.  No fragrant incense here to mask the rude odours of the great unwashed; the smoke from raw Chinese cigarettes a poor but often welcome screen.

 

So many people everywhere. And so noisy.  Nonstop talking. Loud, shrill, insistent voices hammering home their points at one another.  The China din starts well before six am, and carries on, a constant cacophony until well after midnight. When the dogs start barking.

 

Cities so Western – concrete, glass and steel.  Cars, buses, trucks everywhere –even on the sidewalks.  This could be Chicago, New York, Vancouver. No oriental flavour here to savour.  

 

But the language survives, thrives – no English here – nary a word or sign: no catering to foreign tourists.  There is no need: so many Chinese tourists, spending spending spending. Big Yuan.

 

Communism well replaced (and replaced well?) with Consumerism, writ large. Unbridled Capitalism.  All the big name brands – Nike Converse KFC Starbucks Hilton Holiday Inn Toyota Honda – are here.  And all the most exclusive, most expensive brands are here too – Mercedes BMW Gucci Hugo Boss Ralph Lauren Dior Dunhill Luis Vuitton – and doing well.

 

But is that bag a Gucci?  Is that watch a Rolex?  Is that belt real leather?  There are no regulations here, and even if there were, no one would heed them, no one enforce them. Anything and everything goes.  China is the counterfeit capital of the world: buyer beware!

 

The Chinese who have money – and there are plenty who do – have lots of it. And like to spend it. Like to buy things that make them look good.  It's all about face. Appearances. China's about face: from stringent Communism to rampant Capitalism in just a few short years: Where to next?

 

Women in cocktail dresses, baby-doll pajamas, poofy-hemmed curtain dresses, tight mini-skirts.  Like Disney dolls, in Minnie Mouse and Betty Boop outfits. Big buttons and bows, knock-off Gucci purses, and always high heels, strappy high heels, clattering down cobble-stone streets, tip-toeing through mud puddles and seas of litter.

 

Little girls in fairy dresses and party shoes, pink and white princesses.  

Babies with great gaping holes in the bums of their pants – crotch coolers? - being held out over the sidewalk by squatting parents, whispering shh, shh, shh...  

Puddles of piss, baby and otherwise, all along the street.

 

And globs of phlegmy goo. Hoiking and spitting a national pass-time.  More dangerous and disgusting than the globs underfoot the flying globs – spat out the windows of passing cars and buses.

 

Walkers vie for space in the streets with buses, trucks and cars.  They stand, like rocks in a fast-flowing river, the stream of traffic momentarily separating to go around them, but never stopping – there is no stopping!

 

With luck, a critical mass of pedestrians builds up, enough to coax first one car, then another, to slow down or even – wow! - stop, for just a second.  Pedestrians dash across, watching out in all directions: nowhere is one completely safe, not even on the sidewalk.

 

Motorcycles in particular may come from anywhere – they obey no traffic rules at all – don't stop for red lights, ride on the sidewalk, sail the wrong way up one-way streets, and even highways... but then so do cars and buses.

 

China's finest, street-corner cops, sheltering under Coca-cola and Macdonald's umbrellas: I'm lovin' it!  Particularly fitting as no one pays these, or any, authority figures the least attention: regulations abound, enforcement's non-existent.

 

If you have a problem, don't call the police. They're busy drinking coffee, having a smoke, reading a paper, playing a game of checkers, sleeping, smiling. Or riding around on their dinky blue and white scooters with their fellow police persons. 

 

We have yet to see a police person doing anything remotely like 'policing.' Perhaps there is no need here. Certainly we have seen no crime – no one even misbehaving. No punks on the street, no graffiti, no reckless driving (well, that's relative...). 

 

If I lived in China I'd like to be a police person: nice uniforms, cushy job and a free scooter! Yes!

 

We travel through the countryside by bus and train, passing through mile after mile of agricultural mosaic – rice paddies, wheat fields, corn, garlic, tea, vegetables – carefully tended, all by hand.  In all our travels we've seen just a handful of tractors, one or two rototillers.

 

China's agricultural production is achieved, almost entirely, by peasants with shovels and hoes.  They are out there, from dawn until dusk, backs bent to their labour.  China is literally feeding herself on the backs of her peasants.

 

Fields interspersed with drab, dingy towns; heavy, gray Soviet-style buildings and apartment blocks.  

Piles of brick, rock, sand, dotted everywhere, blocking sidewalks, roadways – what are they all for?  

Acres of rubble, covering up old farmland, old rice paddies – what are they going to do here?

 

We cross over rivers long dry – dammed and damned.  And in the rocky river bed, back-hoes and trucks busy mining sand and gravel, digging great holes, making big piles, hauling the rocks and sand away to build more roads, prepare new lands (most previously agricultural) for housing, factories... . 

No fish in the rivers here – there’s no water and nowhere to hide from the hungry.

We wind through mountains scraped and scarred to make roads, grand double-lane highways, freeways. 

 

But where are the cars?  

We pass by miles and miles of new roads with nary a vehicle. 

Who and what are these roads for?

 

 

Careening through these landscapes, no choice but to listen to endless dreadful screeching music, people screaming on their cell phones, or at one another, all talking at once, talking talking talking.  

The Chinese do not know how to be quiet, do not know quiet.

 

Stopping for a 'nutrition' break – nothing to eat but watery noodle soup, a few green weeds masquerading as vegetables.  Or a mountain of rice and a few pieces of pickled cucumber.  Stale popcorn, undercooked potatoes, tough corn on the cob, warm sodas and soft drinks.

 

In the bigger cities, where western tourists are more plentiful, a few restaurants produce somewhat better food. But still always too oily, and often too hot.  Coffee $3-5 a cup, and tea – Chinese tea! - not much cheaper.  We leave most restaurants disappointed, and often hungry.

 

We ask 'where's that great Chinese food we get in Vancouver (San Francisco, Singapore)?'  'Ah, that's not 'real' Chinese food! That's Americanized, westernized Chinese food!'  No chow mein or chop suey here. No sweet and sour spare ribs. No lettuce wraps.  Few vegetables or fruits.  It's noodles and rice, rice and noodles.

 

We watch the Chinese chowing down on rice with soups of chicken heads and feet, pigs' livers, and unidentifiable innards.  

More often it's just instant noodle soups, the Chinese staple food, eaten on the run.  

Or KFC or Dicos – its Chinese cousin.  

I'm lovin' it!

 

Public toilets are despicable. 

We find the toilets by their stench: 'just follow your nose!'  

Inside no separate cubicles: a long, open, cement or tile trough runs alongside the walls.  

The stink inside is overpowering: you hold your breath.

 

You squat over the trough, in front of or behind someone else.  You do your business, trying not to look at anyone else, although they have no compunction about staring at you – do foreigner's shit like we do?  

You avoid looking down into the trough, try not not to splash.

 

There's no water to flush. Of course no toilet paper.  

No water either to wash your hands; maybe a hose outside where someone's doing their laundry, or washing a fish... . 

Maybe not.

 

In hotels and guest-houses we use clean toilets, gratefully. Still we are instructed not to toss the toilet paper in the toilet.  It goes in the disgusting overflowing bin beside the toilet – or the floor if no bin's provided. 

 

And this a nation where everyone has a cell-phone, where cells work everywhere, where high-speed internet access is accessible everywhere.  

A nation proud of its space program, its medical advances, its advanced education.  

So what's with their toilets? 

Why can't they get their shit together?

 

But wait! Here come the symbols of the ‘real’ China!

 

A young man in pleated pants and a tailored shirt, holding a cell phone against his ear with one hand, and a cigarette with the other; weaving gaily through pedestrians and vehicles on his red motorcycle, helmetless and happy.

 

A young woman in rough peasant clothes, bent over double, a baby on her back, and up to her knees in the muddy water of the rice paddy, planting fistfuls of young rice as night falls, wondering what she will give her family for supper.

 

The 'real' China: I'm lovin' it!

Look Out World, Here Comes China

Yunnan Province, Southwestern China, May 2009

 

It's a BIG country, with over a billion people, and it's changing, in some ways more rapidly than similar social and economic changes in the western world, and in some ways, hardly at all. So it's impossible to 'describe' China. Even more impossible for me, having been here only four weeks, and then only in a very small part of one province – which apparently is not at all 'representative' of China – and with the added disadvantage of not speaking the language, and there being very few Chinese who speak English. My China, then, will of necessity be limited to a collection of observations, impressions and reflections.

 

Perhaps the strongest and most striking impression I have of China, particularly having been in several tourist destinations – and by that I mean domestic, or Chinese, tourists, not foreigners, who are here in insignificant numbers, not even worth counting – is one of increasing economic prosperity and exuberant 'getting and spending.' 

 

China is on a roll. 

Everywhere we have been we have noticed rampant new construction, mostly of homes and apartments, but also of shops and office complexes. 

We have also seen a lot of people upgrading and renovating their homes. And almost every home has a solar water heater on the roof, and either cable tv or a satellite dish. 

Absolutely everyone, right down to the guy squatting on the pavement selling his few onions and potatoes, has a cell phone. 

One day we saw two guys in a primitive dugout canoe – called a 'pig trough' by locals – on Lugu Lake. One of them was talking on his cell phone. And in China, talk is cheap, so they're on their cells almost constantly. 

Walking down the road, riding on buses, shopping in the market – cell phone to their ear and talking, talking, talking- generally haute voix (there is not other). 

Even more noticeable are the crowds of Chinese tourists, and locals, shopping and buying. Not cheap knock-off stuff, but REAL Gucci bags, Rolex watches, designer clothes and silver jewelry. More and more Chinese have money to burn. Burning fake paper money is an integral part of religious ritual here that is now finding its counterpart in real spending. 

 

It is clear that the Chinese are enjoying their new wealth. They love to shop. They love to buy things. And, more than anything, they love to be seen with the things they have bought. It's all about status, about not only 'saving face,' by having the latest and the best, but also 'getting face,' by being the first to have them. 

From what we can see, the western world can absolutely count on China to 'save' us from the economic mess we have created with our profligacy. It's their turn now. And there are so many of them that even if only a few of them have the money to spend, it's significant, in global terms. 

 

The propensity of the newly rich Chinese to spend, spend, spend is also a phenomenon that is largely beyond the ability of the Chinese government, which controls the minutiae of its people's lives, to control, even if it wanted to. China is fast becoming 'the new America.'

 

And in a word, what I would say about this phenomenon, in terms of its social as well as economic impacts is: “look out world, here comes China!”

 

The burgeoning growth and development of China, the economic and social ascendancy of China in global terms, has profound implications for the west. The west is clearly not ready, mostly because it is so completely ignorant of Asian, and in particular Chinese, culture. Chinese culture, as western as it is becoming, is still vastly different from western. There are more differences than similarities, and some of the differences are going to be hard for westerners to accept.

 

For me one of the biggest differences is the Chinese attitude towards the natural environment. The most obvious manifestation of this is how the Chinese deal with their garbage. In the first instance, everyone simply throws whatever they don't want on the ground, in the ditch, out the window, or onto a growing pile in a vacant lot or by the roadside. There is no concept at all of 'littering.' 

One morning we were sitting at a small table right on the edge of Lugu Lake – one of Ynnan's premier 'natural park reserves' that you pay 80 Yuan ($15) to enter. A man and his little girl were sitting nearby, slurping down their bowls of noodles. When they'd finished, man and girl wiped their hands on a half-dozen napkins and then pointedly threw them on the ground. 

 

They could have left them on the table for the 'waiter' to collect. There was a garbage can not ten feet away. But they almost made a show of throwing them on the ground. Then the man called the 'waiter' (cafe owner and cook) over to pay. The waiter picked up all the napkins as the man and girl looked on. The man pointed to one of them that the waiter seemed in danger of missing. Perhaps this was some kind of power trip.

 

As they walked away, the little girl, skipping gaily and cute as a button, threw one last napkin insouciantly over her shoulder onto the ground. Either the waiter will pick that one up as well, or it will join the litter in the lake of this treasured provincial park.

 

Even in the 'countryside' the roads are lined with refuse – everything from old shoes and scraps of clothing to plastic bags and bottles and bits of metal. At intervals along every road is a mini-mountain or landslide of rotting, stinking garbage, all open (we have seen no 'garbage bags' in China), and all being liberally spread around by wind, birds and dogs.

 

We've seen several garbage trucks. The garbage workers go round, masked but bare-handed, sweeping and shoveling the loose garbage into buckets and baskets and tossing the contents up into the trucks. We presume there are even bigger piles of garbage somewhere outside the cities, although we haven't seen them – yet. 

 

There are some wonderful small-scale and long-standing recycling practices in China. In the cities we've been in so far, we have seen men and women with bicycle-powered carts who go round collecting cardboard, paper and metal. They carry little scales, weigh the metal out, and pay the householder for it. 

 

We've also seen people collecting slops from homes, businesses and restaurants. We don't know whether the collected slop is fed to pigs (presuming they like their food hot, as most of it is here) or used for compost. Either way, it's better than combining it with the garbage.

 

Even sadder than the garbage on the roads is the garbage tossed into China's streams and rivers. Additionaly, liquid waste is often dumped into rivers and streams. 

In cities, we watch people coming out of their homes with a pail of sudsy, greasy or dirty water and pouring it into the cement-lined gutter/stream that borders the sidewalk. Just 'downstream,' someone is washing their dishes or doing their laundry with that same water. Someone else is brushing their teeth or washing their hair. 

 

The little streams that run through cities and towns often stink like sewers, although many support goldfish and carp, as well as healthy populations of plastic bottles and bags. In the countryside, the majority of the rivers we've seen have been dammed, with plans in the works to dam more, and bigger. We've seen many almost dry river beds downstream of these dams – trickes of water where there used to be torrents. We've seen no fish ladders. 

 

China's demand for electricity, consistent with the new found wealth of its people, and their demand for all things electric, coupled with increasing demands from the rampant economic and industrial growth, is almost insatiable. China is also building dams in Laos, and buying power from Vietnam.

China is also cutting down its forests at an alarming rate. 

Here in Yunnan, many houses are constructed not just of wood, but of huge timbers. 

The biggest timbers, some two feet in diameter, support the two-story structure. 

More timbers are used for joists and flooring. And more wood is used for elaborate carved gates, doors, windows and decorations. 

 

Both here and even more in the north of China, wood, and sometimes charcoal, is also used for cooking and heating. It's burned in open fires, either outside or inside the house, where holes in the roof are the only escape for the smoke. These fires are dreadfully inefficient, requiring large amounts of wood to produce sufficient heat for cooking. 

 

We were quoted a horrific statistic about China's use of wood: 6 tons per person per year. At that rate, China's forests will be gone in no time. Furthermore, according to a young American we met who had been working in northern China for an environmental NGO, China has so far had little success with its re-forestation projects. 

 

In his view, this is because the Chinese have insisted on planting trees that are not suited to the climate or conditions of the natural environment. They are more concerned with 'aesthetics,' wanting the trees all to be the same, and all in perfect rows – appealing to their sense of order – than with biology. Certainly we have seen many denuded hill-sides, and several areas where planted trees have not taken hold.

 

In terms of their cities, what we see is that the Chinese tend to favour 'pretty' and 'cute' built environments. Old houses and neighbourhoods give way to new boutiques and malls. Several of the cities we've been in have a sort of Disneyland feel – the new buildings are done in a 'traditional' style, but lack authenticity. Art installations, meticulous plantings of flowers and shrubs, old-timey light fixtures, and dramatic night lighting complete the effect. 

 

In many cases, the Disneynification is completed by tourists having to pay an entrance fee to get into the city. In Li Jiang, the fee is 80 Yuan, or $15. Once that's paid, there are additional fees, usually around $5, for individual 'attractions' within the city – like viewpoints, lakes, parks and historic buildings. These fees appear to apply to Chinese tourists as well, although the Chinese tend to travel in large groups, getting similarly large discounts for such things as hotel accommodation and entrance fees. So where we pay $15, they may pay more like $5, or even less.

 

It's difficult to speculate whether Chinese attitudes towards the environment will change fast enough to prevent the complete devastation of the Chinese environment (and that of parts of Laos and Vietnam). Given the sheer numbers of Chinese (over a billion), I would doubt it. Rather I would see Chinese demand for raw materials and for consumer products continuing to grow at an increasingly rapid rate. 

 

What this will mean, in global terms, is sobering, to say the least. It has made us wonder about the ongoing value of environmental regulations and restrictions in the western world. Compared to the damage that may be done satisfying the exponentially growing needs and wants of over a billion Chinese, what difference will our efforts make?

 

“Look out world, here comes China!”