Jonathan Brun

China Intro

I have now been in China for nearly three months, while this period is still quite short I feel it is sufficient to make certain observations about a society that is going full tilt. Ones’ impression of China from the west is often quite positive, a 9% GDP growth, improving quality of life, more and more openness, adoption of western attitudes, etc. Many people have identified China as the next great superpower that could rival and eventually overtake the United States in as little as 20 years, some say less. My time here has led me to be far more concerned about China’s prospects than I had ever been. I will post some brief, probably incoherent, articles on aspects of the New China. These are not meant as technical analysis of China and are more just my general impressions from reading and seeing things here. Please send me questions or comments, as I am interested in your experiences and views. Those of you who know me, realize that I come across as negative, pessimistic and euro-centric; so keep that in mind when reading these articles.

Inner Mongolia

This past weekend, I went to Inner Mongolia with my friend David Gaucher and another friend, Antoine. Inner Mongolia is on the other side of the great wall and is the homeland of Gengis Khan, Mongolian Horses, Grasslands, and Yurts. We only had the weekend to travel since I had work on monday and both David and Antoine had school. We took an overnight train to a small (250 000 people) town north of Beijing, we opted to avoid any tourist agency and do the trip on our own to have a better experience and save some money. A quick note on the train: We originally bought hard seat tickets because that was all that is left. This means you are in a compartment on hard seats, with a lot of sweaty chinese people staring at you and you have about as much free space as a chicken in a tiger pen. With some swift negotiating and some intense running we managed to upgrade to hard sleepers, and by upgrade I mean that there is absolutly no comparison as hard sleepers are quite nice and you actually have room to breath.

Chinese tourists are truly mind boggling. They enjoy traveling in large groups and staying at inauthentic locations, never really venturing beyond the immediate surroundings of their base. We on the other hand, wanted to head out into the vast grasslands of Huitengxile on galloping mongolian horses, sleep in a small town, meet the locals and have an adventure.

After hiring a taxi for the 80 km ride from the town we arrived in to the departure point of the grasslands, which was a somewhat touristy area, but due to the proximity to beijing (800 km) we had little other choice. We negotiated with some locals to have an inclusive package of food, horses, guides, and lodging for 1500 RMB = 225 CND$ for the three of us for the weekend. We had to do this all in Chinese, which gave them the opportunity later on to say they did not understand us, which we know to be not true.

We ate a quick and rather poor brunch (the smoked salmon was of rather poor quality, and the croissants were under cooked) and we grabbed some horses and headed out. We felt very touristy for the first few hours, but eventually the guides took us beyond the touristy area and into the hills where there was absolutely no one in sight. The scenery was beautiful and the weather was perfect, on the cool side with a nice breeze. Although we had negotiated to stay in a hotel far away in the grasslands the guides took us back to our point of departure. We then had to argue with the manager to explain to him that we did not want to sleep there because of the garbage on the ground, the roaming pigs and the proximity to a windmill farm. He eventually ceded and escorted us my motorcycle to another location where we slept in a concrete block. And by concrete block, i mean, a conrete block with lots of insects, wooden beds and no heating. It gets pretty cold at night in Inner Mongolia.

After a lovely rest we ventured back out into the grasslands for another day of horse back riding. We were all a bit tired and rather sore, but we mustered our strength and mounted the horses. The guides took through a wind farm and out onto flatter, and less interesting grassland. When the guides decided to have lunch, they left us with the horses and told us to go do whatever we felt like. We had already dismounted from the horses and when the guides were gone we tried to get back on. However, my horse was not too keen on having a big white man get back on him, since mongolian horses are rather small and as I was to find out, somewhat tempermental. I made the mistake of touching his butt, whereupon he promptly swung around and kicked me in the knee. It hurt, but having the cat-like reflexes that I do, I avoided the brunt of the strike (though today, I do have a nice horseshoe bruise on my knee). After a little rest, I tried a few more times to get on him, but he was not having any of it. We walked around the grasslands until the guides got back and noticed that one of the horses was wandering towards home, we chased after him and regrouped. We then ventured farther out into the rolling hills and just spent some time under the sun. Being the clever, cautious person that I am, I was not wearing any sunscreen and by this time, despite the misleading wind, clouds and cool weather it was clear I was going to be nicely sunburned.

We eventually made out way back to the camp on our own. We had a mediocre dinner, but at least had some fresh lamb meat. Lamb constitutes about 90-95% of the mongolian diet, the other 5% is usually made up of wheat and potatoes. We actually had the privilege of watching the lamb get killed that morning during breakfeast. After dinner it was time to settle the price. Throughout the weekend, they were constantly trying to extricate more money out of us and to say the least, it was really grating on our nerves. They tried to charge us ridiculous prices for beer and extra food that was slightly more edible that what they originally gave us. After the boss guy (who did absolutely no work) started adding things to the original 1500 that should have been included, we told them that we had no intention of paying him what they were asking, let alone the 1500. We had already handsomely tipped our guides and given them nice LED headlamps, so we felt little need to pay this godfather of the village. We finally gave them a total of 1300, on which, I can assure you, they made a sizable profit. They did not want to let us leave and we had to tell the boss (who was the one that we, nor the guides, could not stand) that he was a capitalist pig and that he had better leave the three big white guys alone. After walking away, the car came out to get us and they surrounded the car and tried to prevent us from leaving. We were rather close to breaking out Wilbert Smith and Jack Johnson and treating them to the two gun show, but our driver eventually calmed him down and got us out of there without any injured or dead chinese people.

Besides the arguing with the boss, we had an amazing time and saw some beautiful landscape. It was a very nice change from the polluted centre of Beijing. We met many locals and everyone was very nice, save the head boss.

As this article is not long enough, a few more notes on Chinese people shall be provided. A few chinese people who are overly ambitious and concerned solely with money can be extremely greedy, deceitful and kniving. It is not that I am not prepared to overpay for things because I am white, I am. It’s when they are constantly trying to rip you off at every single chance they get despite the fact that we tell them we know the real price. They tried to charge us 10RMB for a can of beer which should cost 1RMB. Another thing of note is that chinese people seem to have no concern for sanitation or pollution.

The grasslands, which are a beautiful place are being polluted simply because they do not want to set up garbage cans around their campsites. They just throw bottles and wrappers on the ground and you can see plastic garbage for 300 m around any campsite. They fail to see that that they are killing the very thing that makes it worthwile to go there. I suppose they will learn, just like the west did, but if they cannot learn from our mistakes or if they make all the same ones we did, then we are all in a world of shit. From the outside (the west) China is viewed as the next superpower, that will soon overtake the United States. While many sectors of the country are developing extremely quickly, the underlying infrastructure and social patterns are so far behind, I fear the country may have to take a few steps back to move forwards in the long term. They do not put any emphasis on doing things that are not necessary for the immediate survival of the people. I will deveop more
on these ideas later as they deserve a great deal of attention, but for now I leave you in peace.

China, it’s here to stay

Salutations one and all,

I have been in this bastion of free flowing capitalism and exploitation for nearly seven weeks. So far, so very good.

A few myths that I have come to dispel are that the chinese fight well (let alone take on fifty nasties at one time like jet li, bruce lee, Jackie Chan…); that they are zen; have the amazing work ethic we hear so much about; or that they have good breath. Also, there is little to no communist ideals here, its everyman for himself and they are willing to cut their prices so much to obtain your business you have to wonder where it all ends. On a recent trip to an old fortified town (PingYao), that is somewhat touristy, our chinese traveling companions went from one hotel to another, arguing and fighting, and bringing the price down. Our hotel rooms went from 150 RMB per night to 100 to 110 to 80 to 60 to 50RMB = 8 $. We had to trick, and lie and deceive, but we ended up saving money, and that is what is important in life.

My job (read place I need to be between 9-6, and sometimes 10 everyday), remains of practical use. I am slowly learning Chinese with the help of my colleagues, my tutor and a dog named Zhang Bo (who has pulled me from three burning houses, a pond, and an ugly confrontation with a Mongolian Panda Bear). I have also managed to travel to north east China, the great wall, and a few places not too far from Beijing. I have seen the poverty that belies most of the country and I can say it is not quite as bad as one might expect, but there is so much work to be done I do not know how it will ever get done. The thing is, its not that a few people are still poor, or that farmers are poor (they are) and are sparsely spread across the country side; it’s that there are so many people and they are everywhere. We drive for hours and all you see is the same repetitive, dirty, store fronts with old men playing chinese chess and drinking beer.

I have been told that the poverty here is nothing compared to India and from what I can tell, significant progress is being made. It remains that in my opinion, China will not be able to follow the same road to modernization that we, the west, took, due to the shear magnitude of the population. It is technically impossible for China to consume the same amount as we do, the future inevitably lies in renewable energy and a more modest way of life. That being said, there is still tremendous misery; children who drift in the streets of Beijing begging for money are usually enslaved to a phony mother and father who bought them from a countryside peasant. If you are so kind as to give one of these children food or money, the fake parents come and snatch it from him/her and eat it themselves; yes, they eat the money. So, when I am with friends we usually buy these kids food and then stand with them so that it is not taken away from them. It never stops for the white man, all the tourist sites or foreigner areas (like near my office) are filled with chinese people trying to sell you this or that, a toy, a necklace, a child, a kidney. It really makes one think twice about throwing out a thousand dollar suit after wearing it once.

Last week, a large, oddly shaped, pasty white british fellow wobbled into my apartment, set up a Playstation and plopped down on the couch, he has yet to move. Thankfully, he has managed to hand over some financial contributions for the necessary air conditioning to keep him from melting in the 40C smog infested atmosphere we call Beijing. His name is Charles, and yes, he will be my roommate.

On the social scene, I have been partying like its 1421 (the peak of the Ming Dynasty). There are many bars and clubs in this great city and the best part of all, is that, I can afford to get drunk at a bar and to buy people drinks. In the city there are a tremendous amount of foreigners and certain districts are just crawling with them. We try and go to places that are a little more popular with the local people, but we often end up with foreigners (laowai). Smaller towns, or bars without any whities are very different, but the staring and drooling gets awkward when its an old man with no teeth doing it. My canadian friend (see pic #1 – he’s the other non-chinese guy) and I had this old dude telling us how beautiful Canadians are and how he wished he could come to Canada and maybe even stop by our apartment later for a chinese massage; being the friendly foreigners we are, we invited him back, and let me tell you, what fun! Beijing is often criticized as being a boring city, due to the prescence of all the government offices, and nothing in comparison to Shanghai, however, in recent years the nightlife has bourgeoned and is as good, if not better than any city on the planet. To leave a mark on this city, beside the growing trail of dead peasants, I plan to have a white linen suit made and get a peasant to follow me around with an umbrella, like back in the day when we were in charge. Hurray for colonialism!

I ask you this: Have you ever been the center of attention without doing anything crazy, not being a good looking girl, or being naked in a downtown metropolis? Well, I have. As in, in any small town or on the train I am often stared at by Chinese people and even more so by kids. The kids (haizi) usually manage to say hello and then run off, comming back for a little more “white man with chinese people” staring session. Their behavior patterns are most comparable to a hesitant chipmunk who comes and goes before accepting food from a humans hand. To comfort the young chinese, I usually answer their queries with: “Hello, I am Chinese, but I am very ugly” to which I usually get a roaring laugh and a hesitant welcome into their family or group of friends. The females of breeding age take a particular interest to foreigners, and we’ll just leave that at that.

Well I have a cold and headache, but I am off to a St. Jean Baptiste party tonight at the Novotel in Beijing that is run by a Quebecer. Maybe I will bump into some people from back home; however, I may be ostracized for going to english school, speaking with a 16th arrondisment accent and not being a hard core sovereigntist.

Have a great weekend (zuomo kuaile),

Chinese Tourists

I did not write this article, but it pretty much hits the nail on the head. I really could not write a better or more entertaining article; so I have (with her permission) copied and pasted Shelly Timmins article here:

China Anecdotes and Antidotes | Home

No, I like Chinese people; I just hate Chinese tourists.

There is a wide range of foreign travelers that come to China. They fit into nice little subcategories like “backpackers” and “businessmen.” They either behave themselves properly or heap embarrassment upon their native lands. It’s a coin toss. Chinese travelers however, by and large fit into a single category, the Chinese tourist. I know, stereotyping an entire nation of people is naughty and at least impolite, especially when the stereotype is not flattering. But hear me out; my opinion comes from long experience and many encounters with the perplexing ways of the Chinese tourist. Also, I make a distinction between Chinese people and Chinese tourists. Expat scientists are still trying to figure it out, but something happens to a Chinese man when he takes a vacation and joins a tour group. He becomes extremely obnoxious. It is this phenomenon I wish to expose. So let me be clear; I like Chinese people in general. I just hate Chinese tourists.

The average Zhou who joins a Chinese tour group is at least in his 30s, most often much older and retired. He has money, and he’s not afraid to use it. He of course wants something for it, but your average Chinese tourist is willing to spend a lot more on a nice big meal than most foreigners would on vacation. Traveling in China is still a luxury that most cannot afford. Therefore Chinese travelers are out to make the most of the occasion. First, they get dressed up. Compared to a Chinese tourist, most foreign travelers look rather grungy, especially backpackers. Whether scaling the Great Wall, hiking in a national park, or river rafting, Chinese tourists have to look their best. Slick-soled dress shoes and high heels are standard wear, and dress shirts with the occasional tie are ubiquitous at all tourist attractions. It never ceases to amaze me when I see people hiking up mountains in their finest. I’ve also lost count of how many times Chinese tourists have looked at my sneakers or hiking boots and commented with sincere admiration, “Hmm, it’s probably much easier to hike in those shoes.” You think?

Next, Mr. Chinese Tourist joins a tour group. Traveling in China is a group activity, no doubt about it. I’ve met countless foreign travelers that have struck out on their own, for up to a year at a time and across several continents. True, this kind of traveler is a special breed, but not an uncommon one. Chinese tourists however rarely travel in packs of less than 10. In China, travelers consider the more the merrier. Further, joining a Chinese tour group is like joining a team. You don’t just eat and travel together; you wear the same hats or pins or track suits (I’m not kidding) or all of the above. Your flag-and-megaphone-wielding guide is your leader, and you’d follow him into the gaping maw of hell if he told you there were good souvenirs there. The tour group becomes your identity.

Red Hats following their colorfully dressed guide and her yellow flag in Dali, Yunnan Province.

I didn’t realize how strong this identity was until I rebelled against it during my first Chinese tour group experience. I and my girlfriend at the time joined a tour to see Zhangjiajie National Park in the northwest of Hunan Province. I decided I didn’t really want to wear the group-issued red-and-white hat. I had already joined the tour group against my better judgment, but I couldn’t bring myself to fully join the herd. My girlfriend was confused. “But you have to wear it.” “I have to wear it? Why? Believe me I don’t think the guide will forget that there’s a lao wai (foreigner) in his group, and I’m sure I won’t have any problem keeping track of our guide or the rest of the group.” So we met up with our fellow tour members that morning and immediately several of them asked why I wasn’t wearing my hat. My girlfriend made excuses for me by saying I had forgotten it in the hotel room, but I don’t think we were fooling anyone. Perhaps it was only my imagination but I got the very tangible feeling that thereafter we were not considered part of the group. Not only did no one really talk to us but they always kept some space between us. The tour guide didn’t acknowledge us. This didn’t bother me at all but it amused me thoroughly. The next morning was even better. This time my girlfriend didn’t wear her hat either, and it again became a topic of conversation. And then, as if they hadn’t realized it was an option before, several other members took off their hats. On each successive day of the tour, more and more members stopped wearing their hats, and by the end only two elderly members still had their hats on. I didn’t know whether to feel proud or guilty. Either way, I had upset the tour group dynamic.

My tour group at Zhangjiajie National Park, Hunan Province.

Not only do they travel in groups but they like to go to places guaranteed to be re nao (热闹). This is best translated as “hot and noisy” but its connotation is more like “lively.” To most foreigners, “hot and noisy” places are to be avoided. To Chinese people, re nao means a good time. Here’s a simple example: you stand outside of two restaurants with comparable food and prices. One is packed to the rafters, and you’ll likely have to wait and/or sit at a table with strangers. The other is nearly empty and rather quiet. Which restaurant would you prefer? Most Chinese people would choose the crowded restaurant while most westerners would go for the quiet one. It’s just one of those things you have to chalk up to cultural differences. You see, Chinese people like crowds partly because they like doing what everyone else is doing. If you go to Emei Shan you must see the sunrise, even if it’s cloudy and cold and you’d rather not get up at 5am. The hotel I stayed at didn’t even give its guests a choice; they banged on every door assuming that everyone was there to see the sunrise. Wherever you go, you must take a picture in front of every single object and sign, especially the famous ones, with you either grinning broadly and flashing a peace sign or standing stolidly, but nothing in between. These are among the foremost rules of being a Chinese tourist.

There are other ways in which Chinese and western tastes in tourist attractions differ. Many Chinese people don’t quite see what’s so great about ancient architecture or other things that foreigners associate as “very Chinese.” Chinese tourists have grown up with these things and of course aren’t searching for the authentic Chinese experience like most foreigner travelers are. For them, the “real China” is called life and they live it every day. So when they travel on vacation, they’re looking to get away from all that and see something special to them. My second experience as part of a Chinese tour group drilled this lesson into me. This time I was with an even bigger group, all of whom were my coworkers at Melody. Part of the itinerary for our 4-day tour of Hainan (the island province touted as “the Hawaii of China”) was a visit to a temple that contained a large statue of Buddha. Admittedly I didn’t know anything more about it than that, and there was no mention of any such temple in my Lonely Planet guide. (So it must not be worth visiting, right?) And I’ll also admit that I’ve seen more than enough Buddhas and temples in China so that missing one is r
eally no tragedy. However, I was more interested in that temple than anything else we had seen so far. Then I learned that we were replacing it with a visit to an “authentic” minority village. If you know anything about these showcase minority villages in China, you know they’re anything but authentic. When I expressed that the Buddha would be cooler than the minority village, I was rebuffed by everyone within earshot. “Who wants to see some old Buddha? Only old people like that stuff. Let’s go see the Li Minority Village!” So we did, and it was everything I expected. And my coworkers loved it immensely and took pictures of them next to every last one of the “natives” and bought enough souvenirs made from coconut husks to fill the bus.

An “authentic” Li wedding and village house in Hainan Province

For the same reasons my coworkers couldn’t understand my interest in seeing “some old Buddha” so it is inconceivable to many foreigners traveling in China why the Chinese tourism bureau goes to great lengths to “ruin” tourist attractions. Instead of leaving sections of the Great Wall in crumbling yet majestic conditions, they completely rebuild them (I mean with newly quarried stones), add a cable car up the side, and pipe in loud pop music. Westerners understand the impetus behind stall after stall of souvenir vendors (money), but why are they selling shoddy facsimiles of Mickey Mouse and baby dolls dressed like Amish farmers that play music and dance when you flick a switch? Why? Because that’s what Chinese tourists like. Why do “hiking trails” in China mean wide swaths of neat stone steps cutting through a forest or up a mountain, lined with snack and souvenir stands? Because Chinese people like to hike in dress shoes and high heels, remember? Actually it’s the “hard core” Chinese tourists that actually hike up these manicured trails; the rest take cable cars or elevators up the mountain. Yes that’s right, elevators. I stared in shock and disbelief for at least 5 minutes at the elevator up the side of Tianzi Peak in Zhangjiajie National Park. Here the sheer cliff face of the citadel-like mountain (exactly the type of scenery that draws people to the park in the first place) had been covered up with cement and steel reinforcements to support a glass elevator. After all, the hike up would take a whole 3 or 4 hours and cable cars are passe.

The elevator at Tianzi Peak, Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province.

So foreign tourists need no longer wonder why ancient buildings and monuments receive complete makeovers so that they look like Disney-esque versions of ancient China. Give up trying to figure out why the local tourism board improves access to natural tourist attractions by destroying vast portions of the natural beauty that draws tourists there in the first place. To the local entrepreneur, it is much more lucrative to make your business/tourist attraction appealing to Chinese tourists instead of foreign ones. Unfortunately, the amazing difference in what is appealing to westerners and Chinese means that you can only choose one group, and because of this many sights in China have become completely unappealing to – and devoid of – foreign tourists.

At this point the reader might be thinking that while these aspects of the Chinese tourist are reason enough to avoid joining a Chinese tour group they aren’t enough to inspire any sort of loathing for them. Yes, certainly, and I’m not so easily stirred to hatred. So let me tell you why the average Chinese tourist makes me want to punch them in the face: pollution. I’m talking about every kind, from littering to noise pollution. I could still derive some enjoyment from even the most Chinese version of a tourist attraction if it weren’t for all the Chinese tourists there.

Pollution comes in many shapes and sizes, not the least annoying of which is noise pollution. You can tell me that American tourists are loud. I know they can be. But Chinese tourists are hands-down the loudest on earth, especially if they’ve been drinking. I can understand this somewhat. It’s their vacation; they’re having a good time. It’s annoying but understandable. But even without the noise of the tourists, the racket of the constant, poorly enunciated trivia emanating from tour guide megaphones would drive construction workers mad. If you want to enjoy the tranquility of nature in China, you will have to either visit it in the middle of the night or during another SARS outbreak. (I don’t wish for another outbreak, but I must say I loved traveling during that May Holiday.) Otherwise “tranquility” at a Chinese tourist attraction remains only a holy grail for foreign travelers. During a recent trip to the Dazu Buddhist carvings in Chongqing Municipality, I observed a tour guide using her megaphone to address a solitary tourist. It was just the two of them. The room we were in wasn’t crowded or noisy. I wanted to wrench the megaphone from her hand and shout into it at her, “You could whisper and he would still hear you!” Instead I took a picture and counted it as another wonderful encounter with Chinese tourism.

The guide with her solitary tourist, still using her megaphone, Dazu, Chongqing Municipality.

However, for me noise pollution is nowhere near as infuriating as the wholesale littering I see whenever I travel in China. I grew up in the mountains just outside of Yosemite National Park in California. It’s a beautiful area. In the US, it’s a commonly held belief that littering is bad. In California, it would make you a pariah (along with the smokers). In Yosemite, it’s a hanging offense. So I find it difficult to remain calm when I see tourists littering en mass in an area of great natural beauty. After all, they are destroying what they have come to admire simply because it would be inconvenient to dispose of their garbage properly.

My first memorable experience with polluting Chinese tourists was also the most shocking. I was enjoying a cruise up the Yangtze River just a few months before the completion of the Three Gorges Dam would begin submerging much of the area’s scenery. I was gazing out my cabin window on a quiet moonlit night with only the hum of the boat’s engine and gentle plopping sounds disturbing the silence. Gentle plopping sounds? I leaned out the window to get a view of the port side of the boat. Trash was literally raining out the cabin windows. And it wasn’t just small things; I saw big bags of trash, big enough to make audible plops over the noise of the boat. This is of course to say nothing of the human waste discharged into the river as the ship’s public bathrooms consisted only of a long urinal/fecal ditch that drained into the river like a rain gutter. This was just one boat with at least several hundred tourists, among a fleet of boats daily plodding up and down the Yangtze, the worlds longest toilet. By the way, every cabin in the boat had its own trash can, but the window was apparently just as handy.

Returning to my favorite Zhangjiajie National Park tour, among my tour group was an average Chinese family, 30ish parents and their young son. On the one occasion that we actually walked up the staircase of one of the smaller mountains, I witnessed another senseless act of pollution. Keep in mind that on this trail one could actually stand at one trash can and see the next. As we rested, I watched the little boy finish some candy and, standing right next to a trash can, fling the wrapper off into the woods. I lost it. “Hey! There’s a trash can right next to you.” My girlfriend grabbed my arm and begged me not to say anything more. “But he just threw his garbage into the woods!” His parents lowered their heads but said nothing and did nothing to discipline their child. I thought that was the most frustrating thing I had seen … until the next trip, and the trip after that.

To be fair, I must acknowledge that I have come acr
oss one tourist attraction in China that goes to great lengths to prevent pollution. The park rangers in Jiuzhaigou National Park in Sichuan Province are extremely diligent in enforcing the park’s smoking and littering bans, both of which carry heavy fines for violators. There are no food stands in the park except for a centrally located tourist center with plenty of trash cans throughout its area. Tourists are not allowed to stay overnight in the park, legally anyway. I actually got in trouble for spitting sunflower seed shells instead of collecting them and disposing of them in a trash can. I was very impressed, but now I must get back to my ranting.

When I express my frustration about polluting tourists to my Chinese friends I always get the same answer: “China is a developing country.” Some of my western friends have fleshed this idea out a bit more. They point out that attention to environmental issues usually only comes after a population’s more basic needs have been addressed. In other words, the average Zhou can’t be bothered with the pollution of the Yangtze River when he has to worry about feeding his family or even how to afford that bigger TV set. My answer to both groups is, “Bullshit.”

I acknowledge that China is a developing country and that many issues require education drives to solve them. So I would accept this argument for issues such as the unofficial AIDS/HIV epidemic in China. However, individual pollution (as opposed to industrial pollution) is only the result of a lack of common sense. I don’t think any of the people on that boat tossing their trash into the river thought they were doing something good for the Yangtze. If they didn’t realize they were hurting the river then they’re utter idiots, which has nothing to do with the development of their nation. On that trip, I even overheard people pointing to the trash floating in the river and lining the banks and commenting on how terrible it was, which only frustrated me more. I doubted that those people hadn’t thrown one ounce of trash overboard themselves. At best one could argue that the tourists who litter don’t know how much they’re hurting the environment when they do it. But can anyone explain the reasoning behind someone who goes to an area of natural beauty for the purpose of seeing said beauty and then consciously performs actions they know will damage that beauty? The only answer I can come up with is that they don’t care.

Likewise I am aware of the economists’ formula my western friends always point out when I bring up the pollution issue. To me that explains why the government and most Chinese people would pay more attention to the benefits of projects like the Three Gorges Dam (irrigation, flood control, generation of electricity, and so on) than the detriments (destruction of an ecosystem, submergence of world-famous natural and archeological sights, and so on). It doesn’t explain how relatively wealthy tourists have no concept of the damage they are doing. The only need they’re concerned with is getting their garbage out of their way. So the people in the boat threw it out the window instead of putting it in the trash bins in their cabins. The little boy dropped his candy wrapper into the forest instead of into the trash can right next to him, and his parents took no notice. And every time I get on a train, I get to see Chinese travelers toss bottles, plastic bags, and more out the window instead of putting them on the trays between each column of berths or at least into the trash cans that are at either end of the train car. If education or the satisfaction of other needs is necessary to combat this problem, then this only leaves me with the conclusion that human beings (since these theories do not only apply to China) don’t care about hurting others or other living things until they find out that they are also indirectly hurting themselves. How depressing is that? Perhaps that’s what makes me so angry about this littering, because it’s an indictment of human behavior that I didn’t notice until it was brought to my attention through observation of a foreign culture.

Hmm, this is getting a bit heavy for my website to handle. I should stick to low-grade humor and leave this stuff for people with fancy titles. However, my issues with Chinese tourists have been something I needed to get off my chest in a public forum. I’ll leave off with a final plea. Please, if you are a Chinese tourist or if you’re thinking of becoming a Chinese tourist, consider staying home. But if you must go on vacation, I hope you’ll take my comments here to heart. Thank you.

The Fall of Communism

I thought I would give you guys an an update on my situation even though I find these mass emails self engrossing and often pointless. I will attempt to make this worthwhile.

I arrived in Beijing a week ago and have managed to find an apartment (see photos) and get to work. To say things are different here would be both an understatement and misleading. Humans are humans. The general citizenship are cordial and understanding regarding my language impairment and they remain generally honest, though no matter what I pay, I feel like I am being ripped off.

It remains that most everything is cheap here. I bought fake puma running shoes for 6$ and on Friday I had dinner, took three taxis and got completely smashed for about 20$. A Canadian dude from BC is in an apartment next door; he had some friends over and we ate down in the Hutongs below us, with beer, for a grand total of (drum roll) 10$ (for 5 of us). Hutongs are the old school, ghetto, chinese housing that is very dirty and essentially completely impoverished, they are all over the city (see one of the attached photos). We first went to an expat white trash party, at which my canadian buddy and this black american new yorker won best white trash costume. Essentially, because booze is so cheap, I bought one round and the rest of the night people were handing me liquids to consume. I had also been told that Chinese beer is remarkable dry and therefore gives you one hell of a hangover. They were right. We then hit up a night club not unlike something back home except for the fact that it is full of chinese people. By then I was already remarkably drunk and I ended up avoiding a fist fight with some black dude thanks to a massive asian bouncer. I danced around like the drunk jewish boy that I am for a while, until I realized I did not recoginze anyone in the club. So I hopped in a cab, mumbled some chinese stuff and passed out for 20 minutes, woke up handed over 4$, got out, climbed four flights of stairs, and passed out, woke up to barking dogs and crazy chinese people and swore off Chinese beer for the next 8-12 hours.

My apartment is completely brand new and better that anything I would get in the western world (see photos). As labour is ridiculously cheap here, the city is immaculate. You do not see any garbage on the street or in the subway system. You are constantly being waded on. Fast food restaurants bring food to your table and there is always an abundance of people willing to help you. I am unsure how the country will be able to completely modernize to the level of the western world as increases in wages would inevitably lead to layoffs and general social discontent. At my office building (it is a high end office building) there are 4 doormen, 4 security guards, and two people at an information booth inside. Not to mention the army of cleaning staff that roam the building like drones in white labcoats polishing everything that does not shine sparkle sparkle. There are people everywhere. You cannot go anywhere without there being many many people, not just a few people like back home, but many many people. I take the subway to work and as you can imagine, it is chaotic. But a little canadian muscle usually manages to get me in and out of the train with minimal casualties to the local population. The streets are all gigantic and what looks like a 5 minute walk on a map is actually 25 minutes. Beijing is 4 times bigger than Paris. And Paris is pretty fucking big.

Pertaining to the actual purpose of my trip, my job, I am working in downtown Beijing at the sales office for Danieli. Danieli is an Italian company that produces machinery for steel plants, they also do project management for the installation of their machinery. They produce machines for everything from Blast Furnace linings to galvanizing lines (which, for the non technical among us is like from A-Z in steel making). The office in Beijing comprises about 50 Chinese people and 20 Europeans (mostly Italians), but at any given time, 30% of the office is traveling. That being said, I will be doing a substantial amount of traveling for the company. This will permit me to see the real china and to get some hands on experience. Business is conducted in a mixture of English, Italian and Chinese, which means that the people in the office are all very intelligent and capable. I am leaning chinese and will likely get a tutor (costs 3$/hour) after I meet my supervisor on Monday. I am involved in the negotiations of contracts and I will go to the plants to make sure the machinery is being properly installed and to convey any problems to the company. I am leaving to North eastern china on Wednesday for four days and I may go to Taiwan next week. Of course, I will not be doing this alone, but I should obtain a fair amount of responsibility and I am essentially guaranteed a job anywhere in the world when I am done, unless I prove to be a real fuck-up, which remains a distinct possibility.