Try to remember the September – 2009 China tour: Beijing
Terminal 3 of Beijing Airport, at which I landed, is larger than London Heathrow Airport's 5 terminals combined with another 17% to spare.
I spent the first week in Beijing, a city where I lived and worked for over three years. It had been eight years since my last visit. I got excited when I was still flying over the Pacific. Lots of memories about the city came back to me. I kept wondering what the city has changed into now.
It’s a mixed feeling.
No difference from the past trips, the first difference I sensed was the air. The smell was a bit odd when I landed in Beijing. But soon my sense of smell was “neutralized”. The pollution, which has been much better than before, however, still makes everything looks a bit dull and dirty. That’s quite a turn-off to the folks who have been living long in the west.
Post rush hour traffic on a major road in Beijing crossing with the 3rd Ring Road, an in-city highway (the bridge showed in the picture), including bicycle traffic (under the bridge). One big notable improvement - cars are driving in lanes now. But shadowed by pollution, you only get to see blue sky a few times every month.
Almost immediately after I left airport sitting in my friend’s brand new beamer (BMW), I saw the biggest growth in China’s recent history – cars. It was mind-boggling to watch so many cars, many of which are imported high-end cars, spinning on the streets in the unique Chinese ways – they change lanes every 10 seconds and they cut in & out as if there were no cars around them. I could hardly imagine what an amazing change has happened to the country, including people’s lifestyle and many brand new industries, in such a short time thanks to the supersonic growth of the auto industry. To the large auto makers who suffered economy downturn in North America, China is no-doubt their new hope. To me, I hope soon I can drive a made-in-China Hummer.
Then, the third thing that impressed me was the infrastructure. The high way, the telecom system, online services, and the public transit system all have been greatly improved since my last visit. Crazy, for lack of better word, is the perfect match to China’s growth in such major cities. Yet, what’s equally impressive to me was the level of civilization of average Joes (lao bai xin, in Chinese) as I still see lots of cigarette smoking in public areas and spitting on the street. Apparently, the historical challenge won’t be easily resolved in one or two generations.
For about $50 per night, the comfort inn styled hotel room is way better than motels here. Not bad at all.
Before I left Toronto, I asked my friend in Beijing to book me a 4-star hotel. But he said:”Don’t waste your money. Just live in a hotel close to my home so I can easily pick you up everyday – you know how bad the traffic is, don’t you? The hotel is really not bad and it’s cheap.” I cannot argue with him since I have to rely on his car, and it turned out he was right. But I did feel funny when he drove me in his BMW 730 to this not star rated modest hotel called Hanting on the Northeast 3rd Ring. Looking could be deceiving. The hotel room and service are much better than I thought (pretty much the motel price you pay in North America for a 3 star hotel hardware and services). Bottom line, talking about cost effectiveness, it’s very good. Each room comes with unlimited Internet access. So the first thing I did was getting online and checking if any of my clients missed me.
Naturally the dinner is on my friend – a tradition called “jie feng” or “xi chen” (give a dinner for a visitor from afar) that has been shared by Chinese for thousands of years. Again, riding his Beamer, we went to a Sichuan styled restaurant. My friend had to park his big car on the “island” between automobile lane and bicycle lane. It’s legal and everybody does so. Obviously the city planning was way behind the auto market growth. It was a hot day, and the spicy but delicious Sichuan food only made me hotter. I was already sleepy when I returned to hotel – no need to worry about jet lag which was already gone thanks to the long flight.
More to find out about Beijing in the next post …
Last Train Home: The high price of low-priced Chinese goods
Folks, Last Train Home is a great documentary movie about China that everyone should watch – “an emotionally wrenching portrait of migrant workers in China”.
Behind the glamorous ads, displays, and shelves in the shopping center around us, this is the TRUE story and REAL life of people who made the clothes that we wear every day.
Never take what we have for granted.
Read more about the making of the movie at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1512201/. Toronto Star has a story about the movie at
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/movies/article/770425–last-train-home-the-high-price-of-low-priced-chinese-goods.
Kudos to Lixin Fan and his crews for making the movie!
Lifestyle – China vs. North America (IV): Night Life
Night life – sleepless in Shanghai, Beijing, Chongqing, Canton, Nanjing, Shenzhen, Wuhan, …
Nanjing Road in Shanghai. On such streets, the businesses are never lack of traffic, even at midnight.
To the biggest surprise to many westerners on their first trip to China, the night life in major cities is way beyond their imagination. No matter variety or scale or content, the North American version is absolutely dwarfed. From exotic bars or tea houses to busy Karaoke places, from crowded restaurants of all sorts of styles to crazy nightclubs, from 24/7 shopping centers to late opening recreational centres, from art performances and concerts to underground entertainments, from the ones you see a lot in the West to the many you’ve never heard of, guaranteed you will feel the unbelievable energy and creativity Chinese have for their night lives. On the contrary, North American large cities leave a “countryside” first impression to many Chinese immigrants or visitors who came from the big cities.
It’s true – Chinese love night life and they spend loads of money on it. The younger generations, those who were born after the 70’s, are only crazier. To release their pressure at work or school, to make out with friends, to find a date or one-night stand, to celebrate their achievements, or to simply kill the time, they show up on the street at the hottest places and they have become the biggest group of night events goers. Yet, at the same time, the night events are important social vehicles to businessmen. After getting a bit loosen up at dinner, many business meetings would carry on to private karaoke rooms, where you can hire some “professionals” to serve every guest by singing and drinking with them (the services can go beyond those in many cases if you know what I mean), and recreational centres, where you can enjoy many games and excellent massage services (some of those places could be raunchy). Believe it or not, many deals are sealed off in such “intimate interactions”. If you search in YouTube for “Brits get rich in China”, which by the way is a very truthful production about how westerners conduct their businesses in China, you’ll see what I’m talking about in one of the episodes.
A modern karaoke room equiped with projector video system and advanced touch-screen song selection system.
Actually, in many Chinese big cities, there are two types of Karaoke places. Besides the one mentioned above, which are filled with young hot girls and smell of money, there’s another type designed for family and friends gathering. Their services focus on two things: 1) the AV system, and 2) the quality and variety of food and drinks. In some places, you can even bring in your own drinks without being billed for any surcharges. The second type, which charges by hours of room usage (a few hundred yuan per night), is typically much more affordable than the first type, which makes money from not only room charges but the extra amount of drinks and foods consumed and “inspired” by your professional accompanies. In some top-notch places (first type), one night of Karaoke party of 4 to 6 with accompanies can easily cost you anywhere from RMB6,000 (USD880) to RMB30,000 (USD4,400), tips to accompanies included, depending on what and how much you drink and eat. For any “additional services” you absolutely have to pay extra.
The well known "Pink Army" of a famous Beijing entertainment center run by someone deep rooted in the government. At guests' requirement and price tags, the selected "professionals" can provide any services from the basic singing to "special services". One of the hottest army members, after being murdered last year, was found to have over RMB100 million (USD14.7 million) on her bank account. Go figure.
Unlike some North American cities, in which alcohol is regulated and even banned in nightclubs, the large cities in China never restricted the consumption of alcoholic drinks except for driving. You can purchase alcohol anywhere in the city and you can drink it anywhere you want. However, the Chinese government is damn strict on drugs. According to the law, anyone who produces, smuggles, sells or transports 400g or more heroins will be sentenced to death. The recent news buster that the Chinese government, despite the appeal made by the British government, executed a British who was caught in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang province, for smuggling 4kg heroin into China was a perfect example. The message was clear – don’t even think about it. If you want to get high in a pub or nightclub in China, go with alcohol, never drugs.
Prostitution was never legal in China but it’s everywhere. If you ask for “special service”, the Chinese euphemism for sexual service, in the Type I karaoke places and night clubs, 10 out of 10 you will get a positive answer. It’s a lucrative business and everyone in the loop gets a cut. In fact, prostitution has become such an open phenomenon and also a serious challenge to the public health in China that the government has to face it by sending experts to educate the service providers how to have safe sex and avoid STDs including AIDS. At the same time, the government would regularly raid the underground brothels every year to stop it from growing rampant. The action is called “sweeping off the yellow”, a color Chinese use to symbolize pornography and prostitution (for instance, an adult movie is called a yellow movie). In reality, each “sweeping” is a double-edged sword which sets back local economy a few years only because so many related businesses, such as hospitality and entertainment, would be immediately affected. Now you know how big and powerful the “special service” industry is.
Almost no exception, all the night clubs and recreation centers are backed by local government, mostly police force, one way or the other to keep trouble makers (gangs & mobs) off the ground. For foreigners who typically have no local roots (family or connection to key persons), my best advice would be – have fun but stay out of trouble. Or you could be in big trouble.
Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) — way more than Kung Hei Fat Choi
The Spring Festival is the most important festival for the Chinese people and is when all family members get together, just like Christmas in the West. All people living away from home go back, making it the busiest time for transportation systems in China for about half a month from the Spring Festival. Airports, railway stations and long-distance bus stations are crowded with home returnees.
A Chinese stamp portrating a traditional family gathering at Spring Festival with couplet (dui lian) on the wall and dumplings (jiao zi) shared by the family.
The Spring Festival falls on the 1st day of the 1st lunar month, often one month later than the Gregorian calendar. It originated in the Shang Dynasty (c. 1600 BC-c. 1100 BC) from the people’s sacrifice to gods and ancestors at the end of an old year and the beginning of a new one.
Strictly speaking, the Spring Festival starts every year in the early days of the 12th lunar month and will last till the mid 1st lunar month of the next year. Of them, the most important days are Spring Festival Eve and the first three days. The Chinese government now stipulates people have seven days off for the Chinese Lunar New Year – much longer than what we have here for Christmas. Wouldn’t you wish for the same and spend the 7 days with your family and friends?
Many customs accompany the Spring Festival. Some are still followed today, but others have weakened.
A tradtional scissor-cut decoration piece symbolizing good fortune, the alike of which are widely used in Chinese families during Spring Festival.
On the 8th day of the 12th lunar month, many families make laba porridge, a delicious kind of porridge made with glutinous rice, millet, seeds of Job’s tears, jujube berries, lotus seeds, beans, longan and gingko.
The 23rd day of the 12th lunar month is called Preliminary Eve. At this time, people offer sacrifice to the kitchen god. Now however, most families make delicious food to enjoy themselves.
After the Preliminary Eve, people begin preparing for the coming New Year. This is called “Seeing the New Year in”.
Store owners are busy then as everybody goes out to purchase necessities for the New Year. Materials not only include edible oil, rice, flour, chicken, duck, fish and meat, but also fruit, candies and kinds of nuts. What’s more, various decorations, new clothes and shoes for the children as well as gifts for the elderly, friends and relatives, are all on the list of purchasing.
Before the New Year comes, the people completely clean the indoors and outdoors of their homes as well as their clothes, bedclothes and all their utensils.
Then people begin decorating their clean rooms featuring an atmosphere of rejoicing and festivity. All the door panels will be pasted with Spring Festival couplets, highlighting Chinese calligraphy with black characters on red paper. The content varies from house owners’ wishes for a bright future to good luck for the New Year. Also, pictures of the god of doors and wealth will be posted on front doors to ward off evil spirits and welcome peace and abundance.
Reversed Fu - what you see is what you get - happiness has arrived. The word "fu", or "happiness", is so excited that it's upside down 🙂
The Chinese character “fu” (meaning blessing or happiness) is a must. The character put on paper can be pasted normally or upside down, for in Chinese the “reversed fu” is homophonic with “fu comes”, both being pronounced as “fudaole.” What’s more, two big red lanterns can be raised on both sides of the front door. Red paper-cuttings can be seen on window glass and brightly colored New Year paintings with auspicious meanings may be put on the wall.
People attach great importance to Spring Festival Eve. At that time, all family members eat dinner together. The meal is more luxurious than usual. Dishes such as chicken, fish and bean curd cannot be excluded, for in Chinese, their pronunciations, respectively “ji”, “yu” and “doufu,” mean auspiciousness, abundance and richness. After the dinner, the whole family will sit together, chatting and watching TV. In recent years, the Spring Festival party broadcast on China Central Television Station (CCTV) is essential entertainment for the Chinese both at home and abroad. According to custom, each family will stay up to see the New Year in.
Waking up on New Year, everybody dresses up. First they extend greetings to their parents. Then each child will get money as a New Year gift, wrapped up in red paper. People in northern China will eat jiaozi, or dumplings, for breakfast, as they think “jiaozi” in sound means “bidding farewell to the old and ushering in the new”. Also, the shape of the dumpling is like gold ingot from ancient China. So people eat them and wish for money and treasure.
Southern Chinese eat niangao (New Year cake made of glutinous rice flour) on this occasion, because as a homophone, niangao means “higher and higher, one year after another.” The first five days after the Spring Festival are a good time for relatives, friends, and classmates as well as colleagues to exchange greetings, gifts and chat leisurely.
To kids, lanterns and firecrackers are the wonders of Spring Festival.
The lively atmosphere not only fills every household, but permeates to streets and lanes. A series of activities such as lion dancing, dragon lantern dancing, lantern festivals and temple fairs will be held for days. The Spring Festival then comes to an end when the Lantern Festival is finished.
China has 56 ethnic groups. Minorities celebrate their Spring Festival almost the same day as the Han people, and they have different customs.
Lifestyle – China vs. North America (III): Food is Heaven (part 3)
Disparity in food prices – a reflection of China’s growing wealth disparity
A bowl of noodle like this could be RMB5, less than $1, at a noodle stand, or RMB10 ($1.5) in a decent noodle house, or RMB50 ($7.5) in a high-end restaurant. Quality difference? Not much. Service and environment? Big difference.
Don’t get me wrong – not every Chinese goes to the expensive restaurants. While wealth disparity is getting worse in China, you actually find many more low- to mid-end restaurants in the streets serving the average Joes. Food stands and take-out stores selling noodles, dumplings, dim sum and millions of xiao chi (Chinese for snacks and fast food) are available in virtually every city and town. And best of all, they are dirt cheap, although some of them might be sold in expensive restaurants at 10 times higher prices.
Surprisingly, such price disparity is not a surprise to most Chinese for it’s a fact that has been accepted in their everyday life. In fact, the real surprise is way beyond your imagination. If we say the price of high-end food is about 10 to 50 times higher than low-end food in North America, the difference between the two ends in China is only measured by hundred, and, in some cases, thousand.
A traditional food stand in Beijing. Many locals would have a hot stew with a cold beer enjoying the combo right on the street. Total cost: under RMB10 ($1.5).
Let’s take China’s tier-one large cities such as Beijing and Shanghai as example. To have a lunch to fill up your stomach, you can spend RMB5 to 10 at a food court or take-out store, or RMB10 to 20 at a fast food chain store such as McDonald or KFC (which runs an extremely good biz in China), or RMB20 to 30 at a simple clean restaurant, or 40 to 50 at a nice air-conditioned restaurant with good service. For parties or banquets, the per-person food and drink cost may go anywhere from 30 to 50 in a low-end restaurant, or 50 to 500 in a mid-end restaurant, or 500 to 1,000 in a high-end restaurant. In some top luxury restaurants, the number may go up to 3,000 and even 5,000 per person. You think only the filthy rich can afford them? Think again. The most crazy number exposed by media was a RMB200,000 meal for eight, which means RMB25,000 or USD3,700 per person. With RMB200,000, many people’s life savings, you can easily buy a small condo in many cities in China. Don’t be fooled though – such exorbitant meals typically are not paid by celebrities or billionaires, but government officials. Corruption? You bet.
Tips on alcohol drinking
Mao Tai (left) and Wu Liang Ye, the top two Chinese brands of distilled spirit selling at a few hundred RMB per bottle, are often seen at dinner and lunch tables. With 34 to 53 percent alcohol, you don't want to mess with them although they don't look that strong. If you want to treat your important business partners or customers, those are the brands to go. It's a guesture that shows you respect them or, in Chinese, gei mian zi (meaning "give them face"). Make sure you get the real ones as there are thousands of fake ones out there. My advice - get a local to help you.
An important side note to those who are gonna have business meetings over lunch or dinner in China – Chinese drink alcohol a lot, not just at dinner but also lunch. It’s part of the culture and you have to work with or around it. A meal with alcohol, no matter beer or spirit (Bai Jiu in Chinese) or wine, is one of the easiest ways to break ice and get close to each other. Generally, Chinese, unless educated overseas, believe that the more you drink with them, the more sincerity and openness you show them, therefore easier to do business with. You get it – it’s a sort of tie you build in a relaxed environment. It’s a chance for small talks and getting to know each other at personal level.
Funny enough, foreigners are perceived to have high alcohol tolerance by many local Chinese (don’t ask me why). That means they expect you to drink a lot. A famous Chinese idiom says “One tells truth when drunk”, similar to what we say here such as “Truth is at the bottom of the decanter” or “When wine is in, truth is out.” So you should know your limit and start to politely and sincerely refuse more alcohol when you are half way to the point that you have no idea what you are talking about. Then your business associates would believe you are really done for after your taking another few reluctant shots, before you are really done for. If you have a low tolerance of alcohol or allergic to it, tell them up front and, ideally, bring someone who can drink for you. Bottom line – never overdrive yourself.
(To be continued)
Lifestyle – China vs. North America (III): Food is Heaven (part two)
Restaurant Dining
Entrance and guest waiting area of a shi-shi restaurant in China. Young ladies stand by the door greeting guests and each private room has two designated waitresses. A regular meal here would cost RMB1,000 to 2,000, or USD150 to 300, per table, depending on what you order and what type of room you choose.
Similar to the western food culture, in the Chinese culture different alcohols and drinks are suggested to match different types of food. Again, similar to the western up to five course dining habit, Chinese typically prefer to start off a formal meal with small but fine cold dishes as appetizers, or a long stewed soup in Cantonese style to depress your appetite (that’s probably why Cantonese are so thin). After heavy dishes of meat, lightly cooked veggies are served to help you keep nutrition balance. Except in Cantonese style, soups are served following veggies to complete the main courses. Not big fans of dissert, most Chinese prefer to have fruits after meal – a healthier choice, isn’t it? Instead of coffee, Chinese would have tea to help digest the food and remove the grease. There’re certain variations in each different genre, but the above would give you a simplified view of how a formal meal is served in China.
A private banquet room in a modern Chinese restaurant. Kara-OK ready. Customers are charged RMB200, or USD30, plus 15% of total food and alcohol consumption for using the room.
As a part of the Chinese family culture, small and big family gatherings over meals happen not only on festivals and birthdays, but on everything celebrate-able, such as promotions, graduations, movings and anniversaries. Moreover, many business meetings are conducted over lunch and dinner tables. To meet the huge demand, many mid- to high-end Chinese restaurants offer well decorated private rooms to make your dining experience more enjoyable. Designated well-dressed and well-mannered waitresses are assigned to each private room serving with proper, sometimes complicated, etiquette and taking care of guests’ various needs and requirements, such as room temperature, background music, and special orders. Not to mention the regular services as their routine. They simply quietly stand by in the rooms when nothing is required from guests. Believe it or not, they are never on tips – one of the big differences in food businesses (I’ll explain in a separate topic). Some restaurants even provide specialized waitresses to entertain the guests upon request, either helping business talkers break the ice or creating a warm atmosphere for parties with jokes and songs (many rooms are Kara-OK ready). They can even play drinking games with you. Warn you, though – 1) those pretty girls are very good at drinking; and 2) you are the one who picks up the tab for whatever they drink.
At this point, many of you might challenge me by saying “How come I didn’t see much of the food culture in any Chinese restaurants here?” Very good question. While I agree that your observation is correct, let me share with you a few most important reasons as well as some new trends that you might not be aware of.
- Historic reason: Most early time Chinese immigrants to North America were uneducated labour force either smuggled or snaked from Canton and Fujian, two southern provinces of China. Lack of skills, one of the easiest ways to make a living is opening a restaurant. Following their memory of Chinese cuisines and using the makeshift local materials, they brought the first impression of Chinese food to the North Americans – cheap, poor service, unhealthy and always ended with fortune cookies. And they unintentionally made you believe the low-end Cantonese cuisine is the whole Chinese cuisine.
- Localization: To keep the local customers coming back, many restaurant owners changed their recipes to meet the preference of the customers’ taste buds. Some even changed their menu structure to make it easy for you. Eventually, many dishes, regardless which cuisine genre they originated from, became the North American genre. Only in heavily Chinese populated cities, such as Toronto, you may find the original unchanged cuisines of each major genre, thanks to the strong local demand from the over 300,000 Chinese living in the city.
A high-end private dining room furnished and decorated in ancient style. Waitresses are dressed in Qing or Ming Dynasty style serving customers. Starting price of a banquet here is about RMB5,000, or USD750. Ouch!
- High labor cost: China is well known for its low-cost labor, which made the high-end private room service possible to average Joes in China. Last year, when I host a private banquet for 10 family members in a high-end restaurant in Chongqing, China’s largest city, it only cost me about $200 (USD, all included). Here in North America, few restaurants could afford the local labor cost which is over 10 times higher than that in China. However, things are changing. For instance, in Toronto, I’ve found a few shi-shi Chinese restaurants in which you get very good service and fine Chinese cuisines in elegantly furnished rooms. No plates clanking. No loud crowds. Peace of mind. And you bet, the prices are pretty high, but in a reasonable range – about 30 to 50 bucks per person, unless you order something crazy.
Lifestyle – China vs. North America (III): Food is Heaven (part one)
Chinese food is way beyond Spring Roll and stirfried dishes known by westerners.
Chinese are probably more famous for their love of food than any other ethnic groups on the planet. Some conclude, besides whatever growing from soil, Chinese eat whatever running on the earth, swimming in the water and flying in the sky. Although exaggerating, it’s somehow true – Chinese are very creative making food to the table, which is quite a contrast when you look at the traditional Christian food made from much selected raw materials. Even here in North America, you can easily tell the difference by comparing what the Chinese and local supermarkets carry. No matter meat or veggie, the Chinese always outnumber the locals in variety. However, what you may not know is the complex theories behind the Chinese food culture and the food crisis the whole nation of China is currently going through.
Tofu, just one of the healthy foods invented by Chinese.
The Chinese food culture, having been lasting and evolving for over 5,000 thousands years, is one of the major elements of the Chinese culture. It covers many sub-categories, such as tea culture, alcohol culture and dining etiquette. As a matter of fact, the Chinese food culture has virtually everything to do with China’s ancient philosophy, ethics, folk-customs, medical theory as well as today’s dietetics. For instance, Chinese believe every type of food, no matter veggie or meat or beans, has certain effects on human’s health. In Ben Cao Gang Mu, one of the most famous medical books in the Chinese history, the author, a famous doctor who dedicated his whole life to pharmacology, identified 1892 types of natural medicines, among which many are Chinese daily food. Today, there’re many Chinese soups designed for health improvement, following the numerous recipes collected in the book.
Chinese dumpling, or Jiao zi in Chinese, is one of the most popular Northern Chinese cuisines.
Talking about the creativity and variety of Chinese food, let me give you a quick example. In Beijing, China’s capital and a northern big city which is NOT famous for its food, there are virtually thousands of dumpling restaurants because dumpling (jiao zi in Chinese) is one of the most popular northern foods. Among the thousands, a few well-known ones offer over a hundred types of different dumplings. In one franchise restaurant, you will find whooping 400 some types of dumplings in its menu. In other words, you’ll have to spend over year to taste all of their collections if you try one type of dumpling a day. Yet, the restaurant manager, when interviewed, said the restaurant is inventing new dumplings every month. So the menu just keeps growing…
Crab is always a welcomed seafood at a Chinese banquet table. Price varies a lot depending on seasons and locations.
Gong Bao Ji Ding, a mix of sliced chicken and veggie stir fried, is one of the most known Chinese dishes to foreigners.
The Chinese cuisine, due toChina’s huge geographic coverage and various regional cultures, has numerous genres. However, the most influential and typical known by the public are the ‘Eight Cuisines’. These are as follows: Shandong Cuisine, Sichuan Cuisine, Guangdong (Canton) Cuisine, Fujian Cuisine , Jiangsu Cuisine, Zhejiang Cuisine, Hunan Cuisine, and Anhui Cuisine . The essential factors that establish the form of a genre are complex, including history, cooking features, geography, climate, resources and life styles. Cuisines from different regions are so distinctive that sometimes despite the fact that two areas are geographical neighbors their styles are completely alien.
Here are just a few examples I randomly picked from some Chinese food websites:
Xinjiang styled roast rib, juicy with a unique flavor - a perfect match of red wine.
Flower shaped steamed dumpling with a mix of veggies seasoned by chiken soup, looking good and tasting great.
A mix of multigrain rice, nuts and dates stuffed and steamed in a coconut shell - a Chinese dissert. Healthy and yummy.
A classic Sichuan cuisine which is famous for making simple low-cost food delicious.
Chinese love fish. Steamed fresh weever or bass, highlighting their original flavor, often shows up at dinner table.
(To be continued)
Man Han Quan Xi, a well-known Chinese feast featuring the best collection of Manchurian and Chinese delicacies.
Update mental rural China
B Y Q. FOBBESZTH A~YG& JOHN A. DONALDSON
FOR THE STRAITS TIMES
Women in straw hats stoop over water-logged plots, working together to plant rice seedlings. A weatherworn man trudges behind an ox ploughing his family’s field. Farmers throw newly harvested grain in the air so the wind can carry off the chaff. Tour buses navigate past grain carefully laid out on the black-topped road to dry.
For thousands of years, Chinese farmers have been using the same "technology" to grow crops and feed their families. Even today, while China's large cities are well known for their world class infrastructure, the rural China's landscape hasn't changed much.
Though picturesque, these images of rural China perpetuate stereotypes of a conservative culture resistant to change – and affect public policy.
For instance, many inside and outside China argue that an agricultural system based on small family farms can never produce enough for a growing nation. To increase output, modernisation must occur, land holdings must increase in size, farmers must move to the cities and industrialisation must continue apace. China should reform its agricultural sector. At the very least, land must be privatised and consolidated.
It is not that the images which lead to this argument are completely wrong. Some areas of rural China have not altered much in recent decades. Indeed, during the course of our research, we took photographs that matched these traditional images of agrarian life – except for the seemingly ubiquitous satellite dishes perched atop old wooden houses.
Last month marked the 30th anniversary of China’s reform, one of the key world-transforming events of the past few decades. Experiments by some bold farmers kicked off the reforms in 1978. In the 30 years that have followed, how has rural China changed?
While news of China’s growing industrial, technological and military prowess frequently hits the headlines, changes in the countryside rarely get much attention. This bias helps to perpetuate the image of rural China as a deadweight dragging the country down.
Yet China’s rise would have been impossible without developments in the countryside. China produces enough food to feed its huge population. In effect, Chinese farmers use 10 per cent of the world’s arable land to feed to per cent of its population. Achieving food self -sufficiency has not only political and strategic significance, but it also means China can divert its foreign reserves to industrialisation.
Rising agricultural productivity has also released labour from rural areas, providing the country’s industrial and service sectors with an almost unlimited supply of workers. One need see only the massive flow of rural labourers from the cities back to the countryside for the Chinese New Year holiday – estimated to have numbered half a billion last year – to realise the scale of the transfer.
Rural China has also become a huge market for domestic industries. Its importance has become particularly conspicuous in this time of economic crisis: A key measure in China’s recently announced economic stimulus package was to subsidise rural residents’ purchases of home appliances.
Supported by one of the strongest agricultural research systems in the developing world, scientists in China turn out new seed varieties every year and farmers readily adopt them, boosting productivity. Studies show that Chinese farmers update their baskets of seed varieties as often as their American counterparts, and twice as often as Indian farmers.
China’s agricultural commodity markets have become highly developed. Prices of crops such as maize and soya beans move in sync nationwide, thanks to an integrated national market. Instead of leading an isolated life of subsistence, many Chinese farmers now produce directly for world markets and follow global price fluctuations closely. We have met coffee farmers in Yunnan who check the international price of coffee beans on the Internet before selling their crops to multinational companies like Nestle.
Rural land-rental markets have also experienced rapid growth in recent years, allowing both farmers and agribusinesses to engage in large-scale agricultural production. Agribusiness companies of all sizes have contracted with a large number of neighbouring families to grow a specific commodity – everything from orchids to wasabi – and sell the products to countries such as Singapore and Japan.
Farming in China, long thought to be resistant to the forces that have altered other sectors, has in fact undergone fundamental – even revolutionary – changes. While traditional subsistence farmers still exist, they have been joined by many market-savvy, biotech-using, Internet -surfing, labour-hiring, land-renting and commodity-producing “new farmers”.
We would do well to update our mental pictures of rural China.
110 Years difference of dragon stories
You might not believe me if I say China’s dragon culture has been well known to the world for over 100 years. But it’s very true. The westerners started to use dragon to symbolize China over 100 years ago, and here’s the proof. Below are a few westerner-drawn cartoons reflecting China’s changes in the world history.
Let’s first flash back to a century ago and review what the China dragon looked like in the westerners’ eyes then.
TITLE: The real trouble will come with the "Wake"; CREATED/PUBLISHED: 1900; REFERENCE: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cartoon_1900.jpg
The cartoon was published exactly 110 years ago when China, thanks to the inept government of late Qing Dynasty, was a weak country but full of treasures and resources. China, other than a dragon, was more like a lamb to the western countries which were aggressively expanding their international domain to feed the greed of capitalism. In the cartoon, animal personifications of Russia, England, Germany, Austria, Italy, France and Japan fight over body of China (dragon) as U.S. (eagle) looks on.
TITLE: Dissection du monstre chinois (French for “Dissection of the Chinese monster”); CREATED/PUBLISHED: 1902
Similar to the first cartoon, the image shows how the western countries humiliated China and fought to get a piece of China. The most notorious event happened during the time frame was the looting and complete destroy of the Old Summer Palace (originally called Imperial Garden), known for its extensive collection of garden and building architectures and other works of art worth hundreds of millions pound back then, during the Eight-Nation Alliance invasion in 1900 (Note: the first looting and burning was done by British and French army in 1860). Now the majority of the collections are still scattered in western countries, over half kept in top museums, such as the British Museum and Rutherford Museum, and the other half in private collections.
Now, let’s return to 21st century and see how westerners are using cartoons to depict today’s dragon.
In this cartoon by Morten Morland from The Times, China is portrayed as a fiery dragon, defying the rest of the world. Uncle Sam (i.e., the USA) is caught up in the dragon’s coils. He is waving a fan with IOU written on it (by May 2009, the US owed China $772 billion). The British bulldog is easily kept at bay with a single finger (China disregarded the UK government’s pleas not to execute a British man convicted of smuggling heroin). The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is being squeezed out, while the Dalai Lama is imprisoned in the dragon’s claw. A fin on the dragon’s back has cut the Copenhagen climate deal in half (standing for the third world countries, China was widely blamed by developed countries for the failure of the summit). Around the dragon’s neck hang some pendants in the form of a dollar sign and a map of Africa.
“The meaning is obvious: China is the most powerful country in the world and does whatever it wants”.
Well, personally I believe it’s an overstatement. China has certainly grown into a strong country. Yet, it’s still a developing country with a GDP (PPP) per capita of only $5,963, much less than developed countries such as USA whose number is $47,440. Moreover, China, unlike some aggressive western countries, has been a modest and conservative country in history. Even at its peak times, such as Tang Dynasty and Ming Dynasty, China never invaded any other countries or “does whatever it wants”.
TITLE: USA & China Talk Money
Uncle Sam (USA), holding a sign of “Fix the Yuan” (the Chinese currency) says: “I’m terribly sorry… But if things don’t change… I may be forced to bring trade sanctions to bear…”. And the China dragon, sitting at the wall of “$1.33 trillion reserves” reservoir and pulling the floodgate, replies: “Thanks ever so much for the warning! Just one quick question… did you bring your swimming trunks?”
In fact, the number quoted in the cartoon is outdated. As of 2009, China’s foreign exchange reserves have increased to $2.27 trillion, while USA only has $83 billion, about 3.66% of China’s. At the same time, US-China trade deficit is still climbing, hitting over $268 billion in 2008 (U.S. Census Bureau data).
Once approached by a New York constituent who complained of loss of manufacturing jobs and asked “Why can’t we get tough on China?”, Hillary Clinton replied: “How do you get tough on your banker?” The conversation happened in early 2007, and, as of the end of 2006, Chinese investors held $350 billion in U.S. Treasury securities, about 15 percent of the total foreign holdings of Treasury securities. The most recent stats shows, as of November 2009, the numbers have gone up to $789.6 billion and 21.95% (according to U.S. Treasury, http://www.ustreas.gov/tic/mfh.txt).
Since the US economy is still struggling, thanks to the Subprime Mortgage Crisis starting from 2007, Uncle Sam would better think twice when talking money with today’s dragon.
The dragon story hasn’t ended yet, especially with Uncle Sam. Here is what are happening now:
- The world’s biggest and third-biggest economies traded angry words about Internet policy after the search engine giant Google Inc earlier this month threatened to shut its Chinese google.cn portal and pull out of China because of censorship and hacking attacks.
- China threatened to impose sanctions on U.S. arms firms and cut cooperation with Washington unless it cancels a $6.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan, in an unprecedented move signaling Beijing’s growing global power.
- In coming months President Barack Obama may meet the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader China calls a dangerous separatist. Beijing is likely (guaranteed, I would say) to condemn such a meeting.
- Chinese President Hu Jintao is expected to visit the United States later this year.
- …
The game has just started.
Why Dragon Heir?
Unlike the evil represented dragons in the western culture, the imaginary dragon in the Chinese culture is an auspicious creature which symbolizes power, protection and righteousness.
China is the country of dragon, an imagined creature originated from ancient time when China was not called China yet. The Chinese dragon has the head of a camel, the horns of a deer, the eyes of a rabbit, the ears of a cow, the neck of a snake, the belly of fog, the scales of carp, the claws of a hawk, and the palm of a tiger. Unlike the ones in the western culture, which are mostly evil and devastating, the dragons in the Chinese culture have more characters. Except a few bad ones in legend stories, dragons are the trademark of power and traditionally symbolize auspiciousness with phoenix.
The ancient emperors were deemed the avatar of dragon to manage the country. Therefore, their body was called “dragon body” and their kids are “dragon babies”. Their formal dress is “dragon robe” with golden dragons embroidered in the front and back. People they managed worshiped them as the heavenly dragons. Today, if you take a chance to tour the Forbidden City, the grand palace of Qing and Ming Dynasty located in the heart of Beijing, you will see dragons overwhelmingly associated to the building and China’s history.
However, dragon does not just belong to the royal family, but live among the normal people. As a protector symbolizing righteousness, dragon appears everywhere in people’s everyday life. In the 12-year cycle Chinese zodiac system, dragon is one of the twelve creatures. Typically, people born in the year of dragon consider themselves lucky. Even the ones born in the year of snake would prefer to say they are “small dragons”.
The birth of dragon culture is believed to start from the legendary figure, Fuxi, who is generally acknowledged as the earliest ancestor of Chinese nation. He’s said to have had a human head, and the body of a dragon. He lived in northwest China, and later, he led his tribe down the Yellow River and settled in central China. He created weaving and musical instrument skills. Even the “Eight Diagrams” are said to have been worked out by him.
As time flushed the dynasties away, the history of emperors concluded, but the spirit of dragon stayed in every inch of the soil and every piece of soul of the historical yet awaking country. Dragon has become a spiritual tie linking not only the nation, but Chinese people all over the world. We call ourselves the heir of dragon.
