A walk by the ocean

A walk at night in the summertime, after a delicious Chinese meal, is always welcome.

Traffic

Every line on the street in China is a suggestion. That's how they drive anyway (and I would say they are some of the best drivers in the world).

From what I heard, to get a drivers license you need to win a lottery. Even if you win, you can only drive on highways in your home province. Everywhere else you have to use back roads. The Chinese government is also happy to take away your drivers license, for anything, so people wont report accidents to them or insurance companies.

You also aren't allowed to drive your car if it has a dent. If you get in an accident, you pull into a nearby repair shop and settle the damages, in cash, with the other driver. Witnesses will help determine who was at fault.

In America, we give people tickets and fine them, but usually let them continue to drive. In China if you're a bad driver they take you off the road entirely. All together their system seems safer and to involve a lot less paperwork and judicial oversight. I saw no car accidents when I was there. That's not to say the Chinese system was planned. The government's bureaucracy is so completely unusable that an informal system has taken over.

I've blogged before about how sidewalks double as parking spaces, but small streets also double as sidewalks, even if the streets have sidewalks around them.

There will be people everywhere with cars driving through them. You wont notice the cars coming up behind you and it can be a little scary.



In America there are often lanes going slower than other ones. In China, everyone in the slow lane would move into the faster ones, then switch over just before they had to make a turn. It's very fluid. Everybody is cutting in front of everybody else.



I've been on highways where people were driving on motorcycles, against traffic.

There doesn't seem to be any road-rage involved. I saw one incident where a truck driver had turned too late and was stuck. Everybody, even people in other lanes, honked their horns once or twice, then a police officer walked over and looked at the driver. The sense of shame he must have felt! I think that's all they need.

Lawn work

You need the weeds pulled out of a lawn. Do you have someone spray chemicals? No. It's cheaper to hire someone who does this all day long for a living:



Note: I filmed this in a park, with HUGE expanses of lawn. I guess it pays better than weeding a rice paddy, but still!

Road work

From what I saw, when they are tearing up a road in China they don't close it down. A machine will jack-hammer starter holes in the entire street surface, but cars will still be using it, even with the holes.

It lets the road be used as much as possible, causing the least disruption. Not that people wont stand around and gawk at the racket.

Things I thought in China (part 2)

I saw a cow in an abandoned field, grazing on a bush.

The Chinese like to offer Americans Coke for lunch, but rarely have it themselves.

I saw a woman in a shed. A shed where one entire wall was a mirror. She was watching TV sitting in front of an electric fan. The shed was at the end of a small alley filled with garbage bags on a street with no lights.

I had strawberry yogurt along with my breakfast. When I opened the container it was white and liquidy. I reached in with a spoon to stir up the strawberries, but there were none. It was meant to be drunk and only had the lightest hint of strawberries.

I saw a bumper sticker today; the only bumper sticker I've seen here.

You can make all sorts of faux pas and no one will correct you, or even act like they notice. But sometimes, just sitting somewhere, a stranger will walk very close to you and give you a dirty look.

I have never seen anyone wear a seat-belt.

It is very rare to see a Chinese person with a dog, but if you want to be garunteed to see one, go to a park which doesn't allow dogs.

Stores

Walking down the street the sidewalks are literally lined with shops. Smaller streets, with less traffic, are home to street vendors, who cook food in the shadows.



Many stores are completely open to the outside. Convenience stores especially.



Produce sellers are the best. They let their wares almost pour into the street.



You just want to walk everywhere and see everything. Sometimes you luck out and come upon a night market.



It's flower stalls, fruit stalls, fish mongers and butchers. All close together, all open to the air, all inviting you to come and see their wares.







And you're never far away from somewhere selling food.

Reflections

Green jobs will go where all jobs go

The factories I saw in China were closer to being green than anything I've heard about in America. The workers lived within walking distance of their jobs and ate communal meals. Sunlight was used in place of electric lights, fans instead of air conditioning. Nothing was purchased unless it was absolutely necessary, there weren't even chairs, most people stood while they did their jobs. Cleaning was avoided, the architecture was simple and reusable.

If the factories I saw were hooked up to nuclear power plants (the Chinese are building them) and the plastics were replaced with something biodegradable or recycled (which will happen naturally as prices for those items come down) the factories would be greener than anything possible in America.

So how can we compete?

Right now our green jobs only exist because we subsidize them with money the government borrows. They aren't profitable. We don't even know if the technologies we've chosen to invest in will be the ones favored in the future. Meanwhile, the Chinese have an economy that can turn a profit, create jobs, and produce things people are willing to buy. We don't have that experience. If the green economy ever materializes, the Chinese will have no problem taking every job we've created away. They can do it cheaper and greener. They only have to take the jobs they already have and make them green, while we haven't even figured out how to make jobs, let alone green ones.

While we've borrowed money hoping to be prepared for tomorrow, the Chinese have been making money dealing with today's world, and developing the flexibility to deal with tomorrow's. America's "green jobs" are jobs for a future that may or may not come, and even if it does, probably wont want them.

The feel of a city

Advertising = Art

I had a wonderful time walking around Xiamen. The city doesn't come alive until after dark. Many buildings are covered in garish advertisements and amazing light displays. But it's not unusual to see streets and alleys with no lights, even street lights. It might sound scary, but you feel safe because there are so many people. And even in dark alleys there might be vendors grilling food or people sitting in the street in front of their businesses.

The advertising I saw at night in China makes me realize there is an art movement we in America barely know about. Strange to say, the art form is advertising, and in Xiamen I saw works that could rival anything by Michelangelo. We work so hard to keep our cities clean of billboards and signs, and what do we have? Boring architecture to look at. But in China every modern building is an art gallery, some with displays that change by the week.







This is all one building, note how the advertising (using Western models), is incorporated into the building's decoration:





This is the front of the building, many of these signs have motion:



One big sculpture of light:



More examples of common place decorations/advertisements:











Even places as mundane as pet hospitals and gynecological hospitals can light up a neighborhood:





Update: I take my ideas on a walk, and they seem to have legs.

China isn't Westernized

Pete Terranova: I'm still struck at the Westernization of their culture.

In China they tend to not say the word "Westernized", instead they talk about the "international" craze. They seem to want to emphasize how they have joined the world, rather than how they have been changed by it. And it does seem like a craze. I saw a brand of moon cakes, one of the most Chinese of things, being advertised with a tag-line like: "take a trip around the world", showing images of people in different national dresses eating them.

In the city where I was, no one was wearing anything that looked remotely like traditional dress, other than hostesses at fancy restaurants. There were a few workers who had a peasant look, but they really stood out:





During the Cultural Revolution Great Purge they destroyed much of their traditional culture. The government today is doing what it can to destroy what's left, removing old buildings and trying to standardize everything from the language they speak to the exercises they perform, or putting it safely behind glass in museums.

Obviously, having Western things like clothing has a connotation of wealth and status, so everyone wants them. Add to that the fact that the government embraces Westernization and it would be surprising to not see people and buildings which looked "Westernized", or in other words "completely normal".

Working in China

I had a tour of several Chinese factories. An area that has factories will be filled with identical five story buildings. Lots of the buildings will be empty, some of them may even have signs of people living in them (I saw a few clotheslines). What space is occupied by manufacturing will be simple and spartan, and run down. Big windows are used for light during the day, fans provide cooling, and nothing looks brand new.

It's gives them flexibility. If a business needs to expand, they can take over floors in nearby buildings. If they need to shrink, there isn't much to get rid of. Nothing there is permanent, I was told it is normal to have three different jobs in a year.

The vast majority of the workers I saw were young people, who are their mobile workforce. Most of them wore polo shirts with company logos, but a few wore shirts with brand names like Fendi or Polo. Lots of men had extravagant haircuts, kind of goth, a few people even had their hair bleached to a light brown color. Almost everyone was standing.

I used to look at plastic molded objects with a few parts and wonder what sort of machine was able to put them together. Well, I have seen where they come from, and there isn't any machine. It's mainly done by hand. People will stand together in a group making an object. Each person will have a part in the process. Some of them have simple machines, some of them manipulate the object somehow, some of them are doing the packaging. You give them a bunch of parts and they hand you the finished product, ready to appear on the shelf, inserts and all. They work as fast as the slowest person can go; only if a person is working at a machine making a part might they be stockpiling anything. And they all seemed pretty happy.

The picture you see at the top of the post is what is served in a factory cafeteria. (Everybody took more than I did.) I got to eat in the executive cafeteria, which has an air conditioner, but serves the same food as everyone else eats. We picked our plates, ceramic, chipped, and miss-matched, out of a pile, still wet from being washed. One day was rice, sweet corn with bits of broken pork bones, green beans, some sort of light stew, greens, and bitter-melon soup. The second time I ate there I had what you see in the picture.

TV in China

I think I watched the ending of an episode of China's Next Top Model. All the contestants seemed bad (just like on America's Next Top Model). The woman they kicked off the show was as thin as a ballerina. Just before she left they had her stand on a scale. As she stood there, the refrain from "You're Beautiful" played. She cried when she saw she weighed 56.9kg, a clip was shown of a plumper, more confident, version of her in an earlier episode, and everyone hugged her and cried. It was pretty clear the show had broken her spirit and started her on the road to an eating disorder. Even the girl that "won" the episode had to undergo several minutes of criticism.

This show consisted of four people with laptops and a host. You watched the people play a game similar to hearts on a computer screen:



I saw an infomercial for "Sand" watches (obviously not a brand form an English speaking country). They looked very gold, had two certificates of authenticity, were coated with 0.03microns of 99.9% gold, and had "Au999" prominently displayed on their face:



I think there was a teeny tiny diamond on there, too. The announcer had a mustache that was obviously fake. (The watches cost 44 American dollars.)

There was a period drama:



And a cooking program:



Some guy in a pink shirt talks to people in chairs. The books behind him have titles like "STRUTS IN ACTION" and "Javaserver Pages", but measurements unrelated to computer programming appear on the screen, like ">150mg/dL", ">50cm", and something with "moles", so I have no idea what he was trying to teach (if he was teaching at all).



There were several American channels with Chinese subtitles. American news channels do not have Chinese subtitles, so if you don't know English you wont understand what is being said.

This seems to be a soap opera set in a rural area. the buildings look dilapidated but the people seem to be dressed in brand new clothing, right off the rack:





An old woman sings while young men dance synchronized hip-hop behind her. A large audience waves lights as she performs:



Chinese opera:



A Tide commercial:



Some sort of comedy with a nerd-type with big glasses and a group of attractive female co-stars:





They seemed to work in a clothing store and always had very strong emotions on their faces.

There is an Arabic channel, with subtitles in Arabic, Chinese, and English. This program had a black guy, an Asian guy, and an elderly white lady showing how to do Tai Chi:



There was also a Russian channel. I asked why the Chinese government had television channels in Arabic and Russian. I was told it was to send propaganda over the border.

There were some shows made by the Chinese government in English, so I could consume some of their propaganda. It was a lot of touristy/panda/"learning Chinese is fun" crap but I did enjoy the show "Crossover" which always seemed to end abruptly (right in the middle of conversations). I see the show is available on-line and even there the shows end the same way.

I caught the ending to the American movie "Carrie". What was weird was how they censored the ending. They had all the violence at the prom, but when the mother was killed they only showed a close-up of her face; all the Christian iconography was cut out. I think they were trying to cut out the Christianity, even though the ending isn't exactly material anyone would use for proselytizing. The censors had no idea what they were doing.

Anyway, TV there looked boring; drained of anything interesting or truly cultural.

Things I thought in China

"Learning to say thanks and goodbye in Chinese will get you a lot of friendly laughs (they aren't too impressed if someone can say hello)."

"If you are ever offered tea, have it, because it will always be fantastic."

"I saw a truck loaded with geese (or possibly white ducks). There geese were alive and transported in groups of two or three, in bags of white netting. I could see the geese picking at the netting with their beaks"

"Entire neighborhoods are emptied, torn down, and replaced by new construction. Often the new construction lies empty, giving it the feeling of a ghost town. The neighborhoods which are being torn down are often surrounded by walls of billboards so they can't be seen by passing cars (or bikes, or buses)."

"I am struck by how many beautiful people there are here."

"As westerners we see empty, decaying buildings and think of an economic bubble. But is it a sign of a bubble in China? They seem to be tearing down and constructing buildings with lots of manual, but cheap, labor. Perhaps buildings here are disposable items, like our paper napkins or plastic forks."

"Someone in the street handed me two tiny cards. Inside were pictures of topless women. Either they were advertisements for a strip club or the gentleman was some sort of pervert."

Western food

The Western-style food in China is clearly tailored to Chinese tastes:



No surprise since they're the ones who will be eating the vast majority of it.

This is what I got at an Italian restaurant:





It had fancy plates, a great atmosphere, it even served Pellegrino water; but the lasagna tasted exactly like Chef Boyardee.

It's not anything against the restaurant though, the Chinese seem to like their Western-style food to be heavy and dense. No vegetables, no fresh herbs, not even pickles. It's very unbalanced.

Their club sandwiches are three pieces of toast, meat, and a fried egg (they love fried eggs). If you're lucky, there's a shred of lettuce on it. And the bread they use is always sliced thin and strangely chewy.

The worst place to eat is:



Not that I'd recommend KFC in America.

In China, they focus on the chicken sandwich:



I've heard horror-stories about it, but mine wasn't all skin and gristle, so I lucked out. It did have much too much mayonnaise, and not good mayonnaise either.

There was also this stuff on the side:



I think it's sweet corn, carrots, and cucumber in even more mayonnaise.

The orange drink was good though. The Chinese are good with oranges.

These people made a good chicken sandwich:





I have no idea what they're called, because the Western letters on their logo are upside down and backwards. You can see a little statue of liberty on their place-mat so they're clearly trying to do something American. The fries were a little greasy, but I'd eat them if they were in America. Whatever the hell they're called.

The delivery boy was really excited to have a Western customer and came over, practicing his English on me. He was good, too, even doing a tomato/potato bit when he delivered the fries and ketchup.

It was also the first restaurant to give me a receipt. In China, I was told, restaurants don't like giving receipts, so they can cheat on their taxes. The better restaurants seemed to be required to have scratch-off lottery tickets on their receipts, so customers wouldn't forget to ask for them.

I didn't go into, but saw some Pizza Huts, that looked upscale. It was shocking how upscale they looked; some had specially designed, circular architecture.

Burger King in China is pretty much like Burger King in America, except it's burgers actually taste like beef, and their french fries are like McDonald's french fries. Also, they serve beer:



Much better than a regular burger joint in America!